
Class 

Book„ _3_t 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






A CONTRIBUTrQN TO 
TELEOLOGY 



By 

L. P. GRATACAP 

Curator of American Museum of Natural History 
New York 




New York: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



s*0 



^ 



^ 



O 



LIBRARY of 


ONGRESS 


Two Copies 


rteceiveu 


FEB 23 


1905 


CUSS Ol XXc. Not 
COPY B. 




Copyright, 1905, by 
EATON # MAINS, 



PREFACE 



It has been remarked by Hume "that all popular 
theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of ap- 
petite for absurdity and contradiction. If that the- 
ology went not beyond reason and common sense, her 
doctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amaze- 
ment must of necessity be raised, mystery affected, 
darkness and obscurity sought after, and a foundation 
of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire 
an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason by 
the belief of the most unintelligible sophisms." This 
language alludes in derision to the essential property 
of religious belief and worship, the transcendental 
aspects it gives to living, and the implication in its 
formularies of ideas transcending sense and experi- 
ence. But at the same time it is not without sting, 
and, though it may have been dictated in choler or in 
irritation, it reminds us with a heartless taunt, per- 
haps salutary and not undeserved, that we burden our 
faith with unnecessary accessories, and, like an over- 
dressed woman, are more anxious about the variety 
of our theological outfit than the quality of our ac- 
tions. It detects that lack of continence in human 

iii 



Preface 

nature which, whether at theological banquets or more 
substantial entertainments, disregards the monitions 
of prudence and, for the lack of a little abstemiousness, 
makes itself both sick and disagreeable. The same 
author, continuing the suggestions contained in the 
above sentences, further says : "If we should suppose, 
what never happens, that a popular religion were 
found, in which it was expressly declared that nothing 
but morality could gain the divine favor; if an order 
of priests were instituted to inculcate this opinion, in 
daily sermons, and with all the arts of persuasion ; yet 
so inveterate are the people's prejudices that, for want 
of some other superstition, they would make the very 
attendance on these sermons the essentials of religion, 
rather than place them in virtue and good morals." 

There are both malignity and falsehood in this, and 
there is, besides, no small admixture of truth. For we 
do and learn so much by rote, are so shallow in our 
knowledge, and so vain of our actions, that we are 
prone to make the mechanism of a good habit more 
important than the spirit which prompts it, or the pur- 
poses it subserves. In religion, as a matter of strange 
import and far-reaching consequences, we are con- 
stantly frightened over inadvertencies and omissions 
connected with the rules of conduct associated with 
our faith. The higher energies of enthusiasm are 
readily degraded into the less exhausting impulses of 
routine and shopwork. This is perhaps a conservative 
and beneficial tendency, for we are kept at least in the 
company of truth, which we might abandon if it other- 

iv 



Preface 

wise depended on constantly new accessions of en- 
lightenment and delight. 

Now, this book, we fear, has been conceived in a 
spirit which, partly from misconstruction and our 
failure in language, may offend the sort of formalist 
and theologian whom Hume has satirized. It is, in a 
sense, an apology for those who cannot do everything 
the former demands, or believe all that the latter 
teaches. It presumes to attain more important results 
than this. It endeavors to apply a doctrine of inten- 
tion to the world, the Bible, the church, the creed, and 
conduct. Dangerous and mischievous as such a pre- 
tension may appear, it will be found upon perusal to 
retain the customary limitations of ethics. But this 
book covers a great many other lines of thought. We 
have brought forward intention as the final standard 
of judgment by which men are to inspect the world, 
the Bible, the church, the creed, and their own con- 
duct. It holds us responsible in forming our conclu- 
sions, or in regulating our manners, but it remits the 
penalties of condemnation by the intercession of 
intention. It is also an extension of a paragraph of 
Mr. Mill's, namely, "The only admissible moral theory 
of creation is that the principle of good cannot at once 
and altogether subdue the powers of evil, either 
physical or moral ; could not place mankind in a world 
free from the necessity of an incessant struggle with 
the maleficent powers, or make them always victorious 
in that struggle, but could and did make them capable 
of carrying on the fight with vigor and progressively 



Preface 

increasing success;" but it is an extension never con- 
templated by the author of the Three Essays on 
Religion. 

The doctrine of intention extenuates that dubious 
frame of mind which is expressed in fragmentary 
utterances, suggestions, guesses, the quickened im- 
pulses and feelings of desolate moments, the chance 
struggles we all undergo in making up our minds as 
to the meaning and value of things, amid the waitings 
of discontent, the pangs of temptation, the sickness of 
character, the pertinacity of skepticism, and the change 
and death of hopes. We do not mean that the doctrine 
is a patchwork, baffling and untidy and inadequate, 
but that, starting from some philosophical assumptions 
and their necessary inferences, it leads us to a frame 
of mind which is logical and self-sustained, and is 
the intellectual expression of the shifting and shading 
moods we have hinted at. For it preeminently em- 
bodies the idea, and fixes and reiterates it, that rigidity 
of doctrine, in the details of doctrine, whether as con- 
cerning the world, the Bible, the church, the creed, or 
conduct, cannot be maintained, as a necessity of 
thought, for everyone in religion; it does recognize 
permanent points of reference which are immovable, 
but around which and from which thinkers may form 
their continents of thought in such outlines as will 
express the intention of their minds and characters; 
outlines also which change and grow, recede and wane, 
as that same intention fluctuates — as one would say, 
It is now high tide in bay and harbor and inlet, it is 

vi '* 



Preface 

now half flood, it is now low water. Nor is this all. 
The doctrine of intention applies similarly to the 
phases of belief and religious imagination as they 
oscillate and waver from age to age. It disregards the 
superficies and plain outward actions of men, their 
hesitancy in knowing or assenting, but gauges and 
records their intention in acting, in knowledge, and in 
creed. It strips away the crust of scholastic minutiae, 
and turning from the imperfections of language re- 
veals the intention of theology. It overlooks the in- 
consistencies, the failures, the trivialities, the formal- 
ism of the church, but estimates its intention and rests 
its claims in that. It passes by the irregularities and 
travesties in the biblical record, whatever seems 
fabulous, and whatever can be proven impossible, and 
reviews and reveres it as the expression of an intention. 
It probes the world and finds in it the intention of 
God, and suggests the profitable speculation as to the 
times when it is clearest, the times when it is darkest, 
and the force of the agencies it opposes at all times. 

The doctrine of intention is an introduction to 
theology proper; it invites the inquirer to approach 
orthodoxy by an avenue less wearisome and more 
pleasingly adorned, because less cultivated, and brings 
him to a point of view free and enchanting, where the 
scene is none the less instructive because less labeled, 
less occupied by signposts, and less preempted by 
guides. It does not antagonize theology because it 
embraces it, and all beside, in a wide circle of encom- 
passing conceptions. It regards the whole world, with 

vii 



Preface 

its contents, as intention, and from a high wall of cir- 
cumspection prepares us for divergences of thought 
and practice, prepares us, from a spectacle of defeated 
intention in the universe, to previse the existence of 
interfering intentions in society and in man. 

viii 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Prolegomena i 

Section I. The Supernatural 1 1 

Section II. The Ordinates of Revelation 53 

CHAPTER I 
The Articles of Intention 95 

CHAPTER II 
The World as Intention 150 

CHAPTER III 
The World as Intention (Continued) 186 

CHAPTER IV 
The Bible as Intention _. . . 237 

CHAPTER V 
Conduct and Creed as Intention 284 

CHAPTER VI 
The Church as Intention 318 

CHAPTER VII 
Conclusion 342 

ix 



'What tongue then may explain the various fate 
Which reigns over Earth? or who to mortal eyes 
Illustrate this perplexing labyrinth 
Of joy and woe through which the feet of man 
Are doomed to wander? That eternal mind 
From passions, wants, and envy far estranged, 
Who built the spacious universe and decked 
Each past so richly with whatever pertains 
To life, to health, to pleasure; why bade he 
The viper Evil, creeping in, pollute 
The goodly scene, and with insidious rage, 
While the poor inmate looks around and smiles, 
Dart her fell sting with poison to his soul?" 

— Akenside. 






PROLEGOMENA 



The doubts thrown upon the church, and the light 
which has been more fiercely concentrated on the Bible, 
have in these later days of intellectual turmoil, revolt, 
and asperity driven many minds to doubt the validity, 
if not the value, of both. Remarkable as the Bible is, 
regarded as the Word of God, it presents dilemmas 
of doctrine, perplexities of statement, probable inac- 
curacies, and mythical explanations of facts which are 
inconsistent with any such ideal of truth and knowl- 
edge as is implied in any testament from a Creator 
delivered ad literatim to man. The new view and 
philosophy of biblical revelation makes it largely a 
human document produced under vibrating conditions 
of exaltation and by the natural aptitude and inclina- 
tion of men to write down and retain events, laws, and 
usages. This view has run far beyond the lines of a 
reverential criticism, and has in places taken on the 
character of an injudicious and a mischievous and 
misleading crusade. It has upset the old Sunday 
school interpretations of the Bible, and in the confu- 
sion of their disarray and disturbance Christian train- 
ing has been bruised and disordered, perhaps in 
instances abandoned. 

i 



Prolegomena 

The spiritual homes of men have been shaken, and 
their cracking and splintered supports have been lean- 
ing at such dangerous angles that the refugees of hope 
have gathered in hasty and uncomfortable, if not un- 
sanitary, camps on the plains of free thought and 
agnosticism. Their exposure here is neither creditable 
to orthodox religion nor healthful for themselves, al- 
though these exiles may not feel any uneasiness or 
chill of desolation, rather an exhilaration in their un- 
trammeled life amid the fresh winds of bold and 
wayward speculations, seeing the new beauties in the 
mirage of fancies which the spectacle of nature per- 
petually affords. So much the Bible. 

On the other hand, the church, whether Protestant 
or Roman Catholic, has made claims to infallibility 
and formal rigidity of doctrine which have led to re- 
sults as disastrous as those caused by the theory of the 
verbal inspiration of the Bible, literatim et punctatim. 
Not that such a claim and such firm, hard and fast 
lines of creed cannot be maintained, but that in the 
first case (Roman Catholicism) the claim is absurdly 
and recklessly extended, and in the second (Protestant- 
ism) the creed is either wrong or bandaged up in ideas 
and practices that many intelligent men will neither 
accept nor follow. Thus in Roman Catholicism we 
hear the vain and bewildering boast that its Pope is 
infallible, and when we know in reality that this simply 
implies a pretty safe conclusion that his holiness is 
usually on the right side of the fence, and has got 
there by long and careful deliberation, and with the 

2 



Prolegomena 

assistance of all the advice he can secure — in other 
words, when we know that infallibility means only an 
elaborately prepared opinion given with every possible 
safeguard against error, and in any case, error or no 
error, with every possible presumption that it will aid 
the material prosperity of the church — when we know 
this the claim of infallibility becomes a theological 
hocus-pocus, a straw of logical wits and metaphysical 
and ingenious apologists. As Matthew Arnold says, 
"The same levity [he has been speaking of the want 
of intellectual seriousness in Christians] is shown by 
more cautious Catholics discussing the Pope's infalli- 
bility, seeking to limit its extent, to lay down in what 
sense he is really infallible and in what sense he is not ; 
for in no sense whatever is or can he be infallible, and 
to debate the thing at all shows a want of intellectual 
seriousness." 1 Again, the Protestant sects, in their 
various grades, species and subspecies, shade and 
qualities, are no less provocative of mutinies and dis- 
content; they insist so strenuously upon literal ac- 
ceptations of Scripture, so much upon theological at- 
titudes and beatitudes, they feed on such sterile 
grounds, battening on the wastes of dead opinions, 
their practice is oftentimes so deforming and graceless, 

1 God and the Bible, Preface, p. xxvi. We know and honor and appreciate 
the immense historical importance of the Pope. We are not deaf to such 
appeals as Lilly has made; and we wish Protestants would weigh his pregnant 
words when in speaking of Gregory VII he says he had "a definite aim far 
above 'the vulgar range of low desire.' That aim was the liberty of the church. 
To free her from the fetters, whether of vice or of earthly tyranny, to vindicate 
her claims to absolute independence in carrying out her mission,_ as a society 
perfect and complete in herself, divine in her constitution, divine in her superi- 
ority to the limits of time and space, in the world but not of it, a supernatural 
order amid the varying forms of secular polity — such was the work which his 
hands found to do, and at which, for thirty -six years, he labored with all his 
might" (Chapters in European History, vol. i, p. 137). 



Prolegomena 

and their temper is so readily soured and so narrow. 
If they leave the formularies of their schools or jump 
the fences of their theological inclosures, then they 
become wayward and confused and crazy with guess- 
work and Neoplatonism. 

In saying all this we would not forget that in the 
great masses of the great Christian bodies there are 
numerous men and groups of men separated from their 
immediate surroundings and living with modified con- 
victions, perhaps not always clear, or always satis- 
factory, but at any rate sensibly different — shall we 
say, sensibly better? — than the promulgations of their 
sect. These men form more or less diseased spots in 
the churches, irritable surfaces, cysts of differentiated 
tissue which according to circumstances may be reab- 
sorbed in the general body or separated with more or 
less pain and disaster. 

But these groups do not present any logical solution 
of the religious dilemma; they simply illustrate the 
fact, to quote Mr. Arnold, that "at the present moment 
two things about the Christian religion must surely be 
clear to anybody with eyes in his head: one is that 
men cannot do without it ; the other, that they cannot 
do with it as it is." People in many circles of life 
have fallen into that unpleasant state of feeling which 
Mr. Munger has designated in these words: "More 
live on, silent, puzzled, conforming outwardly, assent- 
ing to the ethical value of almost any church and creed, 
but sententiously leaving 'theology to the parsons,' "' 

»The Bible in the Colleges, T. T. Munger, Century, vol. xxxvi, p. 712. 

4 



Prolegomena 

and those who range on a step more ultra and less 
self -deprecatory use the words of Renan with 
a certain indefinable mixture of sadness and su- 
periority: "All here below is symbol and dream. 
Gods pass away like men, and it would be ill for us 
if they were eternal. The faith which we have once 
had should never be a chain. We have paid our debt 
to it when we have reverently wrapped it round in the 
shroud of purple where the dead gods sleep." 1 

Thus, as all Christianity in all its phases rests upon 
the Bible or upon a church as evidence or authority, 
and as these have, upon a close examination, appeared 
to be inadequate to support its claims or perhaps even 
to give it ethical dignity, many people in this day 
abandon both, some with relief, some with pain, and 
some in astonishment and perplexity. We, for our- 
selves, freely admit that study, scientific examination, 
and general reading must have a tendency to disturb 
hereditary faith, when it is narrow and strenuously 
dogmatic and ill-natured. And so especially in minds 
of an unimaginative cast, or in temperaments easily 
excitable and disobedient, to whom also Christian 
professors with rudeness and crudeness are an in- 
tolerable grievance. For it must be remembered, to 
quote the words of Canon Mozley, that "the majority 
of manhood, perhaps, owe their belief rather to the 
outward influence of custom and education than to 
any strong principle of faith within; and it is to be 
feared that many, if they came to perceive how won- 

1 E. Renan, words quoted by W. S. Lilly. 

5 



Prolegomena 

derful what they believed was, would not find their 
belief so easy, and so matter of course a thing as they 
appear to find it." And it is also quite certain that 
any formal rejection of orthodoxy is in a great 
measure averted because men are not unwilling to 
retain it, even though they are unable and loath to 
defend it. As Mr. Mill has shrewdly said, "We are 
in an age of weak beliefs, and in which such belief as 
men have is much more determined by their wish to 
believe than by any mental appreciation of evidence. 
The wish to believe does not arise only from selfish 
but often from the most disinterested feelings; and 
though it cannot produce the unwavering and perfect 
reliance which once existed, it fences round all that 
remains of the impressions of early education; it 
often causes direct misgivings to fade away by disuse ; 
and, above all, it induces people to continue laying out 
their lives according to doctrines which have lost part 
of their hold on the mind, and to maintain toward the 
world the same, or a rather more demonstrative, 
attitude of belief than they thought it necessary to 
exhibit when their personal conviction was more 
complete." 1 

Now, the real upshot of all this agitation, inquiry, 
and drifting seems to be that there is something wrong 
in some or all the old ways of regarding the Bible and 
the church. But if the old ways are unsatisfactory 
or dubious or inadequate, the very new way of deny- 
ing the important and vital contents of the church and 

1 Three Essays on Religion, Utility of Religion, J. S. Mill, p. ?o. 



Prolegomena 

the Bible seems worse than folly, seems extravagant, 
criminal, and heathenish. It brings into the arena of 
human consciousness nothing new, and abstracts a 
great deal that is priceless. It sustains no loftier 
character than those sustained by the central faith of 
Christendom before, and it will go far to make it 
difficult for most men to sustain any character at all 
hereafter. It eliminates the elements of exaltation in 
creeds, and for them substitutes a blind enthusiasm, 
ephemeral and baseless. It denounces the transcend- 
ing faculty in man of the power of faith in the super- 
natural, and surrenders itself to a sort of everyday 
willy-nilly phenomenal existence that runs from in- 
difference to rhetoric and from rhetoric to suicide. It 
delights in good works and in good pretenses and 
sentences, but it fails to put a stone flooring under the 
feet of creation, or build before us a stairway of 
ascending conditions whose summit and glory is 
heaven. It suffers the inevitable Nemesis of intellec- 
tual destitution, and in robbing life of its sweetness 
seems to blunt our mental powers, and for the ecstasies 
of spiritual insight substitutes a spurious optimism. 
This very new way is some form of agnosticism, and 
agnosticism "appears unworthy of human nature, an 
intellectual cowardice, a despair almost amounting to 
treason, and liable to take the heart out of all noble 
inquiry." 1 Dr. Newman's forcible words are as 
valuable and telling to-day as they were in 1841 : "Let 
Benthamism reign if men have no aspirations, but do 

1 The Faith of the Gospel, A. J. Mason. 

7 



Prolegomena 

not tell them to be romantic and then solace them with 
'glory' ; do not attempt by philosophy what once was 
done by religion. The ascendency of faith may be 
impracticable, but the reign of knowledge is impos- 
sible. The problem for statesmen of this age is how 
to educate the masses, and literature and science 
cannot give the solution." 1 

But it does not rest here. This agnosticism becomes 
an intrepid and encroaching positivism. The func- 
tional activity and recuperative power of a system or 
school of ideas are summoned forth by criticism, by 
attack, and by the challenge of an opposite system or 
school. Agnosticism attacked, as it is and should be, 
becomes dogmatic, combative, and vicious, aggressive, 
virulent, and noisy; this in its lowest manifestations, 
wherein it forms subterranean alliances with atheism, 
social disorder, mental disquietudes, and individual 
lunacy. Among the higher circles of its promoters 
and confessors, men or women with lofty views, in- 
tellectual prowess, and unsullied and clear lives, the 
lines of its intrenchments are surveyed with skill and 
the arsenals of science employed to furnish the muni- 
tions of war, the engines of defense, the panoply and 
accouterments of fighting. Suddenly there issues 
from the retreats of philosophy, the homes of literary 
relaxation, and the laboratories of historical inquisi- 
tion a brilliant company of logicians, philosophes, 
writers, preachers, poets, advancing with the melody 
of musical professions and invitations, confident, 

1 Quoted in the Grammar of Assent, Cardinal Newman, p. 89. 

8 



Prolegomena 

fearless, picturesque in manifold garnitures of dress, 
and alert and delightful in the manipulation of their 
syllogisms and guesses. They move with ease and 
unmolested certainty upon the camp of Christendom 
to find it in disarray, confusion, doubt, its leaders per- 
plexed or motionless or incompetent or deserted. The 
soldiers of orthodoxy have been unwary in firing too 
quick a shot at the foe, and now they are invaded by 
the host of denial and Arianism equipped and jubilant 
with mighty leaders singing songs of victory. Seces- 
sion, revolt, apprehension, ignorance, discontent, a 
bad position, defective defenses, and loose combina- 
tions of forces precipitate an uncertain contest that is 
either feverish with rout or helpless in surrender. 
The sun of science falls in the eyes of the Christian 
forces and blinds and disturbs them, exhalations of 
sentiment palsy their vigor, and glittering terms of 
peace bewilder and tempt their fidelity. The battle 
has been going on some time, but at the moment we 
have reached the prospect for Christendom is not so 
threatening. Compact bodies of men are fighting in 
its midst with weapons seized from the enemy or with 
old implements refitted and readapted, new and stra- 
tegic points have been seized and protected, and a 
system of tactics defensive and offensive has been 
copied from the enemy, whose spirits are less haughty 
and their songs less shrill. The sun of science has 
traveled higher up the sky, and its rays are not so 
slant nor so blinding, the offers of peace are less at- 
tractive, the purposes of parley more evident, the 

9 



Prolegomena 

temper of the enemy less chivalrous, and his appear- 
ance less formidable and less beautiful. 

But, putting aside metaphor, we do find our actual 
religious state of mind to-day fluctuating and eclipsed. 
There is a loss of confidence in many places and a tone 
of rancor in many others. There is a great deal said 
by a great many people in all sorts of ways, and some, 
at least, of it seems said idly and ignorantly; much is 
mischievous because it is half false, and much more so 
because it is half true. The penchant of the day is to 
doubt, and the intellectual force of the day is toward 
doubt. We have said that the Bible, with verbal in- 
accuracies and textual weakness and extraordinary 
statements, and Protestantism, with sectarian narrow- 
ness, and Romanism, with preposterous pretensions, 
are the objects of attack, and the result, the alienation 
of men from so-called orthodoxy. This work is pre- 
pared for many who wish to hold fast to the con- 
structive elements of Christianity and yet do no vio- 
lence to their judgment nor their good faith ; for some 
who are hoping, and indeed feeling, that the majestic 
and adequate proportions of the catholic church, 
which has grown upward and still grows, stone by 
stone, built by science and philosophy and history and 
built upon revelation, recognizing the thought of the 
fathers and recognizing that of to-day, and glorious 
with all the beauty which the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost, the thought of man, and the gratitude of ages 
have added to it — that this church shall become the 
refuge of manhood and her voice its guide, that in her 

10 



The Supernatural 

truth and beauty and divinity shall dwell with mani- 
fest and consummate power. With what more beauti- 
ful words, or more true, can we conclude these intro- 
ductory sentences than those given us by Mr. Lilly? — 
"All things in the affairs of men have their ebbs and 
flows. That great tide of spiritualism which so long 
watered the earth and blessed it has for a season been 
receding. Bare are many portions of its ancient bed ; 
parched are many lands which once drank of its 
waters. But let no man dream that it shall be dried 
up, for its sources are divine. However changed its 
course by the moral and spiritual earthquakes which 
shake the world, it will flow on through the ages 

and acquire, 

'if not the calm 
Of its early mountainous shore, 
Yet a solemn peace of its own, 
As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
Fling their wavering lights 
On a wider, statelier stream: 
As the banks fade dimmer away — 
As the stars come out and the night-wind 
Brings up the stream 
Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea.' " 1 

Section I 

The Supernatural 

The difficulty in thought to-day is the realization of 
the supernatural. The long education our minds have 
been receiving at the hands of science, from its teach- 
ers and text-books, has produced a state of feeling 

1 Chapters in European History, vol. i, p. 253. 
II 



Prolegomena 

that resents the use of the supernatural and that wishes 
so far to minimize its action as to practically abolish 
it. It is thought to be an impertinence to require us 
to believe that sickness will succumb to prayer, that 
accidents are foreordained of God, that the super- 
intendence of God at any moment directs the move- 
ments of planets and suns, creates forms, follows in- 
dividuals, and allots destinies; that it is inconvenient 
and unnecessary to do more than to put God behind 
general laws which he never interrupts or directs or 
modifies, and to leave him there, and to assume that 
every phenomenon in nature, every fact in history, 
and every phase of personal life is the result of these 
general laws acting in all sorts of ways and depend- 
ently operative and coextensive with every particle and 
part of nature whether material or nonmaterial. This 
pervasive action of law is called nature, and nature 
becomes the screen of God behind which he may or 
may not be ; but in no case should he appear in nature 
or in front of nature, or at its sides, or anywhere, in 
fact, so that science may not be disturbed in its special 
province of proving how far he may be dispensed with 
altogether. Now, we have gone very far to prove that 
phenomena are altogether produced by law, and it be- 
comes to an extent intelligible because phenomena 
become predicable both in quantity and quality. 
This is marvelously well shown in inorganic nature, 
in physics and chemistry; here mathematical ex- 
actness is achieved, and the result of a reaction on 
the faces of a crystal, the orbit of a planet, the direc- 

12 



The Supernatural 

tion and color of a pencil of light after reflection and 
refraction, the reinforcement and the cessation of 
sound, can all be foreseen by a prevision resting sum- 
marily upon the determination and persistency of a 
law previously discovered by observation and ex- 
periment. This is well known. In organic nature, in 
the realm of life, we find science has not made such 
long strides, but that it is none the less confident of 
an ultimate illumination by which the origin of 
species, the products of vital force, and the vital force 
itself, playing in and around and from and upon an 
organism, can be calculated and explained, arrested 
and accelerated; when the hue and complexion and 
quantity of thought and the direction of individual 
action can be foretold. This is the reign of law of 
which the Duke of Argyle has said: "The whole 
world around us, and the whole world within us, are 
ruled by law. Our very spirits are subject to it, those 
spirits which yet seem so spiritual, so subtle, so free. 
. . . The perception of this is growing in the con- 
sciousness of men. It grows with the growth of 
knowledge; it is the delight, the reward, the goal of 
science. From science it passes into every domain of 
thought, and involves among others the theology of 
the church." 1 

This universal reign of law and the phenomena it 
rules stand for nature. Nature represents the complex 
totality of matter and associated mind in all its states 
and anywhere, and always referable to a fixed sequence 

2 The Reign of Law, Duke of Argyle, p. 55. 
13 



Prolegomena 

called cause and effect. Therefore, though we may 
never know anything about matter in esse or anything 
about the raison d'etre of many laws — the absolute 
index of their reality, so to speak — we feel certain 
that laws are part of nature to-day, have always been 
part of her, and always will be. We feel certain that 
in the first ages of the world or in the last, however 
different the phenomena or appearances of things may 
be from those we see to-day and from each other, the 
reign of law was and will be still unbroken, and that 
these differences arise from the diverse predicaments 
or positions of matter, and that these diversities arise 
from the progressive union or interference of laws. 
For instance, if we take the Laplace hypothesis of the 
origin of our world we are landed in an initial stage 
which, however it arose, confronts us with such 
strange conditions that the laws of gravitation, 
molecular attraction, and chemical affinity cannot act 
exactly as they would to-day on the surface of the 
earth, though they are the same laws but set aside 
momentarily by other laws. Matter in a diffused and 
gaseous state slowly concentrating around a nucleus 
is certainly very different from the consolidated result 
we have under our feet to-day. Chemical affinity is 
overruled because disassociation at high heats takes 
place. Gravitation or the attractive force of the 
central mass is overruled because the initial rotation 
becomes so rapid through contraction of the whole 
mass that "the centrifugal force due to the rotation 
would counterbalance the attractive force of the cen- 

14 



The Supernatural 

tral mass. Then, those outer portions would be left 
behind as a revolving ring, etc/' 1 Molecular attrac- 
tion is overruled because the more a gaseous body 
contracts the hotter it will become, though the con- 
traction originated in a loss of heat. Again, by what- 
ever hypothesis we conclude to predict the final state 
of the world we would find that all the laws governing, 
regulating, and adjusting life would be superseded, 
life would disappear because the conditions upon 
which life depends would be removed, and removed 
by the action of other laws brought into prominence 
and permanent universality. For instance, it can be 
demonstrated that all the water on the earth's surface 
is quite insufficient to provide the rocky substance of 
the earth's crust with such an amount of water per 
cubic foot as would resist expulsion at any ordinary 
and most extraordinary heats. Could such an ab- 
sorption of water take place — and there are reasons 
for believing it is taking place — of course life would 
cease. Again, if the half-carbonated limestones of 
the hidden and possibly half-calcined strata of the 
earth were fully saturated, the carbonic anhydride in 
the atmosphere would be insufficient to bring them to 
this chemical equilibrium, and in an atmosphere de- 
prived of this aliment of vegetable life all plants would 
perish, and consequently all animals also. Again, if 
through the secular retardation of the earth's motion 
in its orbit through tidal friction or resistance in space 

1 Popular Astronomy, S. Newcomb, p. 496. It is also stated that upon the 
formation of these rings the action of gravitation would be expressed by a 
different law from that expressing it while the central mass remained intact. 

is 



Prolegomena 

we should be drawn nearer and nearer to the sun, the 
possible areas of inhabitation would become more and 
more restricted and finally obliterated. Now, we can 
imagine in all these three cases the laws under which 
forms of life have evolved would suffer reversal and 
a degradation and limitation of life would ensue, and 
a new series of phenomena follow, not exactly like 
those displayed in the past history of earth, not ex- 
actly predicable either, and not exactly referable to 
the laws which we now know. In other words, laws 
are discharged, as it were, are momentarily limited in 
action through the interference of other laws; they 
wane and wax in the control of matter as conditions 
created by their own action displace or elevate 
them to the regency of things. And they reappear 
instantly after disappearance when the same con- 
ditions supervene in which they previously had 
force. The absence of one law means its replacement 
by another. 

Thus the diversification and successions of natural 
phenomena in the material universe at least are fully 
accounted for by law, and it has been insisted that we 
need not go back of the phenomena and their laws, that 
science "believes in certain laws of coexistence and 
sequence in phenomena, and in denying God it means 
to deny that anything further can be known." 1 Is it, 
then, in fact wise or necessary to invoke the super- 
natural at all? We believe it not to be a matter of 
wisdom or necessity, but simply a question of fact as 

1 Natural Religion, p. 17, by the author of Ecce Komo. 
16 



The Supernatural 

to the supernatural itself, and on that ground we 
claim the attention of positivists, naturalists, and 
agnostists. 

At this point we beg to dwell a moment upon some 
real and acceptable definition of law, miracle, nature, 
and supernature. We think some Christian apologists 
and those who believe in miracles treat law too dis- 
dainfully, and display both ignorance and temper in 
what they say. They belittle law not because law can 
be safely slighted, but because they wish to slight it, 
or in reality do not comprehend it. They seem to 
think it (natural law) is an arbitrary provision of the 
Almighty, limited in time, special in scope, and even 
accidental in application. Thus Dr. Mozley says: 
"We only know of law in nature in the sense of 
recurrences in nature, classes of facts, like facts in 
nature." 1 We are told that "the most ordinary so- 
called 'operations of nature' may be truly described in 
the words of Saint Gregory as God's daily miracles." 2 
Schlegel says : "Generally speaking, it is in the divine 
power to suspend the laws of nature, to interfere 
directly with them, and, as it were, to intercalate 
among them some higher and immediate operation of 
his power, as an exception to their uniform 
development." 3 

The Rev. J. J. Lias says : "Let us therefore clearly 
understand that a law of force is not, and cannot be, 
the method in which the force must act, because we 

1 Bampton Lectures, Eight Lectures on Miracles, Mozley. 

2 Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, W. S. Lilly. 

3 The Philosophy of Life, etc., F. Von Schlegel, lecture vi. 

17 



Prolegomena 

have no means at our disposal for proving that there 
is any such necessity. The expression can only be 
used to signify the method in which the force has 
been observed to act;" laws "exist from no inherent 
necessity in the nature of things themselves," and 
consequently "it is quite conceivable that they may be 
dispensed with or overruled or modified by the action 
of other laws, whenever it may seem fit to Him who 
has prescribed them." 1 And Dr. Samuel Cox, who 
is anxious that his readers should feel "that they are 
not listening to a single voice, but to the blended and 
consenting voices of many of the men to whom the 
church and the world owe most," says: "Who will 
not admit that, since man works a thousand signs and 
wonders every hour, signs and wonders cannot be 
impossible to the Maker of men; that the forces and 
laws of nature and of human life must be far more 
perfectly under his control than they are under 
ours ?" 2 And again : "We do not assert that in work- 
ing his miracles our Lord either violated, suspended, 
or abrogated laws. All we affirm is that God may, 
and that Christ did, use them in ways too subtle and 
profound for us to grasp, yet in ways not wholly un- 
like to those in which we ourselves bend them to our 
service." And yet again: "To say that God cannot 
interfere with the action of his own laws, that he can- 
not so modify and overrule, so hasten and retard their 
operation, as to produce what seem to us miraculous 



1 Are Miracles Credible? J. J. Lias, pp. 38, 39. 

2 Miracles, S. Cox, p. 113. 

18 



The Supernatural 

effects, is to say that he can never do what man does 
every day." 1 

Dr. Strong says: "An event in nature may be 
caused by an agent outside of and above nature. This 
is evident from the following considerations: (a) 
Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently 
counteracted and transcended by the higher, while yet 
the lower forces and laws are not suspended or anni- 
hilated but are merged in the higher, and made to 
assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are 
altogether unequal when left to themselves," etc. 2 

Archbishop Trench uses, we think, language which 
very readily lends itself, with some correction, to our 
interpretation of a miracle, but which also appears 
vague and indiscrete. He says: "An extraordinary 
divine causality belongs, then, to the essence of the 
miracle, more than that ordinary, which we ac- 
knowledge in everything; powers of God other than 
those which have always been working; such, indeed, 
as most seldom or never have been working until 
now." 3 

These positions appear conterminous with, if they 
do not exactly overlie line for line, that of Professor 
Huxley when he says : "In truth, if a dead man did 
come to life, the fact would be evidence, not that any 
law of nature had been violated, but that those laws, 
even when they express the results of a very long and 
uniform experience, are necessarily based on incom- 

1 Ibid, pp. 115. 90. 

2 Systematic Theology, A. H. Strong, p. 62. 

3 Notes on Miracles of Our Lord. R, C Trench, p. 18. 

19 



Prolegomena 

plete knowledge, and are to be held only as grounds 
of more or less justifiable expectation/' 1 

Our objection to these ordinary apologetic defenses 
of the biblical narrative is that they misrepresent law 
and misconceive miracles. They also in some of their 
aspects partially coincide with a view of nature which 
eliminates the idea of causation in law, a view which 
we imagine for several reasons these writers would 
be unwilling to indorse. They in a measure make 
laws simply "constant relations of succession or of 
similarity, ,, which having only a provisional insistency 
can be inverted or disturbed by that extraneous Power 
by whom they were first instituted. It is neither well 
nor true to give to natural law an occasional reversible 
and ephemeral character. It must be realized that 
law is a necessity, and that a law established in one 
experiment or observation, so far as the conditions 
present are repeated, will always be law and can never 
be abrogated unless the property of matter or mind is 
changed; that it inheres in the activity of the sub- 
stances it rules, under the differential ruling of the 
properties of those substances. 2 Law is not a nearly 
complete or a more and more completed induction 
from a number of instances; observed at any time, it 
is a complete induction for all time. We venture to 
say that law, in the material universe, is the manifes- 
tation of the properties of matter, unorganised or 



1 Hume, Professor Huxley, p. 131. 

2 For example, it is the law of all gases to diffuse at a rate inversely as the 
square of their densities, but it is the special law of hydrogen to diffuse the most 
rapidly because it is the lightest. 

2Q 



The Supernatural 

organised, at rest or in motion; in the psychic universe 3 
as the manifestation of the properties of mind. Hence 
natural law as the rule of natural force, and natural 
force itself as an evidence of motion, is secondary in 
creation, is not super-applied to matter but is resi- 
dential in matter, is not incepted by God, but developed 
by the contingencies of matter in all its phases and 
states. Material creation involves the bestowal of 
properties to matter, possibly the creation of matter, 
and that is all — the retinue of subsequent develop- 
ments in the natural world are retained and included 
in the quantity and quality of matter, it being added 
that life is itself a property given to matter by which 
matter becomes organized. We know there is an 
obverse position of similar simplicity, namely, that all 
matter is the manifestation of force, or, to quote Mr. 
Lilly, "What, indeed, is matter but the name we give 
to an unknown force of which the manifestation may 
be reduced to resistance, or perhaps I should rather 
say inertia, under conditions of time and space?" 1 
But whatever metaphysical attractiveness this may 
have it is not so comprehensible, nor, we think, as 
truthfully explanatory of the facts of science. In re- 
ligion it becomes pantheism; in science it appears 
painfully like nonsense. It does not appear compre- 
hensible to us that the chair we are looking at, the 
picture, the floor, the precipitation of copper with soda 
in a beaker, the body of a mole or the skeleton of a 
bird, the odor of a rose or the succession of strata with 

1 Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, W. S. Lilly, p. 312. 
21 



Prolegomena 

all their contained fossils in a cliff, are the manifesta- 
tions of force under spatial relations. The theory of 
Berkeley, of the world as idea, is better philosophy and 
better sense. But for us as for the vast majority of 
men the world has an objective reality, and though 
the rejoinder of Dr. Johnson to the Berkeleyans is 
admissibly shallow and trivial, yet the consensus of 
human impressions and belief in this matter are to 
us an infallible monitor and protest against any 
elaborated and exclusive skepticism as to the fact and 
existence of matter and material objects. 

Our definition of law must, however, be sustained 
by inspection or it will not answer, and it must also be 
approved or suggested by the language and views of 
experts and philosophers. Upon inspection it is evi- 
dent that the word "manifestation" embraces two 
ideas, that of form and that of mode, the former re- 
lating strictly to the phenomena or appearances which 
attack and attract the senses, and the latter to the 
order and quality and relations of the sequences in- 
volved. For example, it is a law of ammonia, and 
therefore a manifestation of its properties, that, re- 
garding its form, it smells overpoweringly, is pungent 
and suffocating, that its gravity is 0.589, that it is 
colorless, that it forms salts; and it is also a law of 
ammonia, and therefore a manifestation of its proper- 
ties, that, regarding its modes, it is absorbed by dis- 
tilled water to the extent of seven hundred times the 
volume of water employed and forms a salt with sul- 
phuric acid in the ratio of 34 — to 98 — . It is a law of 

22 



The Supernatural 

the organized matter known as sedges, and therefore a 
manifestation of its properties, that, regarding its form, 
its leaves succeed one another in a line encircling the 
stem ; and it is also a law of the sedges, and therefore 
a manifestation of their properties, that, regarding their 
mode, these leaves are so placed as to make a complete 
revolution of the stem every fourth leaf (phyllotaxy). 
It is a law of heredity, and therefore a manifestation 
of the properties of the organized matter known as 
father and son, that, regarding its form, the son resem- 
bles the father, and, regarding its mode, "that fam- 
ily likeness in any given degree of kinship — say that 
between father and son — is expressed by the fact that 
any peculiarity in the father appears in the son, reduced 
on the average to just one third of its amount." 1 

But objections may be raised to our definition of 
law when we examine the phenomena of electricity, 
life, heat, light, sound. These are familiarly regarded 
as forms of energy acting on or in matter and ulti- 
mately reducible to motion; their phenomena are 
hardly conceived of as properties of matter. 2 But 
they are literally nothing else in the last analysis, and 
they further represent the properties of a subject as 
well as an object, for their peculiarities are partially 

1 Human Variety, F. Galton, Nature, vol. v, p. 296. 

2 In this connection it is interesting to quote a phrase from G. H. Lewes 
(Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i, p. 251). He says: "The objections to such 
a separation [alluding to a quotation from I. R. Mayer] of force from matter 
is twofold: it misrepresents the fact of both being pure abstractions, and it 
transforms a logical into a physical distinction; thus creating two entities and 
replunging speculation into that scholasticism from which the emergence was 
so laborious. It reintroduces the old dualism in which matter is passing, 
destitute of qualities though capable of receiving motion, capable of housing 
qualities, and of becoming the temporary tenement of wandering forces. In 
this scheme qualities (properties as expressed by us) are merely superadded 
and are consequently capable of being separated." 

23 



Prolegomena 

defined by the peculiarities of our own nervous 
sensibility to their effects or influence. 

In regard to electricity an authoritative utterance 
recently made seems to place it with matter, or at 
least removes it with some degree of positiveness from 
energy. Dr. Lodge, in a lecture, we presume carefully 
prepared to present the best thought upon the subject, 
and not dictated by his personal speculations or 
theoretical preferences, says: "Electricity may pos- 
sibly be a form of matter — it is not a form of energy. 
It is quite true that electricity under pressure or in 
motion represents energy, but the same thing is true 
of water or air, and we do not therefore deny them 
to be forms of matter. . . . But electricity — none is 
ever created or destroyed; it is simply moved and 
strained like matter. No one ever exhibited a trace 
of positive electricity without there being somewhere 
in its immediate neighborhood an equal quantity of 
negative. Now, whenever we perceive that a thing is 
produced in precisely equal and opposite amounts, so 
that what one body gains another loses, it is con- 
venient and most simple to consider the thing not as 
generated in the one body and destroyed in the other, 
but as simply transferred. Electricity in this respect 
behaves just like a substance/' 1 If this is acceptable, 
and it will probably be made so, then the phenomena 
of electricity become the properties of matter, and the 
laws of electricity are the manifestations of its 
properties at rest or in motion. 

1 Modem Views of Electricity, O. Lodge, Nature, vol. xxxvi, p. 532. 
24 



The Supernatural 

In regard to life, which seems allied fundamentally 
in some occult or profound sense, hitherto undeveloped 
and possibly unattainable, with chemical synthesis and 
analysis, oxydation and reduction, and conditioned 
upon the peculiar energies of sunlight, we believe no 
more conservative or just statement can be quoted 
than that made by Dr. Stevenson in an article on the 
Physiological Significance of Vital Force : "Whatever 
may be the essential nature of the ultimate life-prin- 
ciple — with which science has nothing to do — it 
cannot be denied that life-phenomena are presented to 
us only through forms of matter. Matter, or material 
organization, is, therefore, so far as human knowledge 
goes, an absolute condition upon which all life-mani- 
festations depend, and to assert, as do the vitalists, 
that this vital energy — an agency which cannot be 
verified though dependent upon a material condition 
for a display of its action — is not related to it, but is 
independent of it and under distinct and antagonistic 
laws, is an assumption at variance with scientific 
truth and reason,'' and therefore " Vital force' is in 
reality another term for the properties of matter." 1 

If we turn to Spencer, whose opinion has very 
widely been regarded as an accurate expression of the 
best knowledge and the most profound sense, we find 
a definition of life characterized by this thinker's 
peculiar powers to seize the superficies and forms of 
things, their formal relations, but also a definition 
utterly useless as affording a single glimpse into the 

1 Popular Science Monthly, vol. xxiv, p. 765. 
25 



Prolegomena 

essence and hidden principle or principles of life. We 
are told that life is "the definite combination of 
heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and suc- 
cessive in correspondence with external coexistences 
and sequences." 1 This is nothing but a string of 
words fairly well describing what a little observation 
and the skill of a schoolman and philosopher reveals 
the course and results of life to be, as a process, but 
simply dumb as expressing anything new about life 
as a force, absolutely worthless and obstructive, if the 
matter should rest at this weighty verbiage, as helping 
us to analyze and then make life. For this definition, 
after all, appears as adaptable to an intricate and 
exquisitely contrived automaton as to organic beings; 
as truly descriptive of Ajeeb as he plays chess with 
every chance opponent, and thereby goes through a 
' 'definite combination of heterogeneous changes both 
simultaneous and successive in correspondence with 
external coexistences and sequences," 2 as of the physio- 
logical and mental phenomena of fish or mammals or 
man. It certainly does not prevent our ascription of 
life to organized matter as a property, nor make the 
laws of animal and vegetable life any less manifesta- 
tions of this property. 

Heat, light, and sound are forms of energy; they 
represent an agency or agencies which do "work," 
whose total sum is indestructible, though by exchange 

1 Principles of Biology, H. Spencer, vol. i, p. 74- 

2 This assumes, of course, that this singular toy is not a disguise or mask 
for human manipulation beneath or near it. But in such a case it is conceivable 
and it is possible to construct an automaton which within a narrow range of 
action meets the requirements of Spencer's definition. 

26 



The Supernatural 

or transformation higher forms of energy become re- 
duced or lose concentration and are dissipated through 
more space, or are equalized throughout a number of 
bodies, and are thereby deprived of the power of 
"duty." 1 Now, this conservation of energy, so fa- 
miliar to everyone in this day, depends upon the fact 
that all energy involves the motion of matter, that 
motion at one rate and direction may be transformed 
into motion at and in others, and it is these motions 
that make the results, as we apprehend them, light or 
heat or sound ; as Professor Tait says : "It is a mere 
consequence of the ordinary laws of motion of gross 
matter that, if all forms of energy depend upon 
motion or position of such particles, the conservation 
of energy must hold." 2 Is, then, motion a property of 
matter? It certainly is not a property in the same 
sense that sweetness is a property of sugar or acidity 
of vinegar, but it is a property in the sense of an ab- 
solute and invariable association only with the idea of 
matter, as itself a possible condition of matter. It is 
preposterous to think of the motion of mind — the only 
other occupant of the universe except force — in any 
physical sense as describing a path from one point to 
another except so far as matter is its vehicle. It is 
insanity to imagine the energies of heat, light, and 
sound could be produced by mind in any phase of 
excitement or cerebration except so far as mind con- 



1 _"Duty" is a term familiar to engineers to express the work done by an 
engine, and this "duty" depends primarily upon the contrasted temperatures 
of boiler and condenser. 

3 Recent Advances in Physical Science, P. G. Tait, p. 68. 



27 



Prolegomena 

trolled and informed matter. "Energy cannot exist 
except in connection with matter" 1 (Clerk-Maxwell), 
and the law of the conduction of energy is directly 
analogous with the law for the diffusion of matter; 
for Professor Tait says: "In all these cases we have 
really been dealing with diffusion, whether of the 
particular kind of energy which we call heat, or of 
the kind which we call electricity, or of matter itself, 
the law of the diffusion being precisely the same in 
the three cases." 2 Yet, further, the ultimate structure 
of matter, according to the conclusions of Helmholtz 
and Sir William Thomson, is a form of molecular 
motion, namely, "The notion that what we call matter 
may really be only the rotating portions of something 
which fills the whole of space; that is to say, vortex- 
motion of an everywhere-present fluid" (Tait). 

It is evident that philosophers who attain a very 
accurate conception of the agencies employed in the 
universe do separate the forms of energy from matter, 
and as a mental abstraction this may be regarded as 
just; thus Professor Tait says: "Heat, therefore, as 
well as light, sound, electric currents, etc., though not 
forms of matter, must be looked upon as being as real 
as matter, simply because they have been found to be 
forms of energy which in all its constant mutations 
satisfies the test which we adopt as conclusive of the 



'Ina curious book by L. Figuer the author consoles himself upon the loss of 
his son with the grotesque thought that the light and heat and activism of the 
sun emanate from the disembodied souls of the dead of earth — a fancy, however, 
which, so far as we know, has not as yet displaced the less poetic speculations 
of physicists. 

2 Recent Advances in Physical Science, P. G. Tait, p. 279. 

28 



The Supernatural 

reality of matter;" but again the same philosopher 
recognizes that "the only difference possible between 
different so-called rays of light outside the eye is 
merely in the extent, form, and rapidity of the vibra- 
tions of the luminiferous medium;" that "our classifi- 
cation of sounds as to loudness, pitch, and quality is 
merely the subjective correlative of what, in the 
air particles, is objectively the amounts of compression, 
the rapidity of its alternations, and the greater or less 
complexity of the alternating motion;" and that "from 
motion of visible masses to those motions of the 
particles of bodies whose energy we call heat is by no 
means a very difficult transition." If, therefore, 
motion may be considered a consubstantial faculty of 
matter and varieties of motion produce the subjective 
effects of heat, light, and sound in us, and though 
energy may be regarded as something apart and quite 
sundered from motion as a simply mechanical trans- 
ference, 1 yet as it depends upon the medium or instru- 
ment of material motion to become expressed to us at 
all, as we are constituted, or, indeed, to effect those 
changes which we call work and temperature, absorp- 
tion, radiation, vibrations, conduction, reflection, 
refraction, diffraction, pitch, etc., then must we not 
regard these energies as properties of matter, in an 
unconditioned sense, even in their most generic form ? 
The specific phenomena of heat, light, and sound at 

1 In a letter of N. Alcock (Nature, vol. xxxv, p. 367) we find Professor Tait 
quoted as follows: 'The energy of vibrational radiations is a transformation of 
the heat of a hot body, and can be again frittered down into heat, but in the 
interval of its passage through space devoid of tangible matter, or even while pass- 
ing unabsolved through tangible matter, it is not necessarily heat." 

29 



Prolegomena 

once involve most conspicuously the specific properties 
of matter, as the varying expansion of various sub- 
stances at the same heat, the contrasted capacity of 
different surfaces for radiation or absorption, the 
musical qualities of different vibrating bodies at the 
same note, etc., show. 

In chemical phenomena natural laws seem entirely 
referable to a "manifestation of the properties of 
matter, " upon whatever hypothesis chemists may con- 
clude to rest as explaining chemical reactions. The 
so-called force of cohesion and the force of gravita- 
tion 1 we conclude can be called properties of matter, 
even if the theory of Le Sage and its further modifi- 
cation by Thomson stand the test of study, inasmuch 
as both rest upon the consequences of motion. 

When we turn to authorities for an indorsement of 
our view of law we are scarcely successful in an 
adequate degree to establish our definition literally 
(though its implication is completely affirmed), for 
most or all writers separate force and its properties 
from matter and its properties. But if our contention 
that the manifestations of the properties of force are 
involved inseparably, quantitatively and qualitatively, 
with the properties of matter is favorably received, 
then the thinkers can be shown to agree with us in 
so far as they make law a development of the 
inherencies of things, and hence unchangeable as long 

1 It is interesting in this relation to quote a sentence from Humboldt's Cosmos: 
"Whether, however, here and in our solar system, quantity of matter is the 
only standard of the amount of attractive force, or whether specific forces of 
attraction proportionate to the mass may not at the same time come into opera- 
tion, as Bessel was the first to conjecture, are questions whose practical solution 
must be left to future ages." 

30 



The Supernatural 

as those inherencies remain unchanged, rather than a 
formula or rule of action imposed by an arbitrary or 
even a rational edict of an omnipotent designer at 
second hand. J. S. Mill says: "Phenomena depend 
on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the 
elementary substances and their compounds ;" also, 
"Man necessarily obeys the laws of nature, or, in other 
words, the properties of things." 1 Saint Thomas 
Aquinas as interpreted by Mr. Lilly regarded "the 
essences of all things created (finite) as manifested 
and related to each other by their proper inherent 
activities, which, of course, are stable and fixed." 2 
Montesquieu says : "Les lois, dans la signification la 
plus etendue, sont les rapports necessaires qui 
derivent de la nature des choses" 3 Lewes writes: 
"Those who speak of the laws of nature being con- 
tingent truths, meaning that a modification or reversal 
of such laws is conceivable, and that under changed 
conditions the propositions would be changed, seem 
not to be aware of the fallacy. A law formulates cer- 
tain specified conditions (our properties of matter), 
and in itself is not at all contingent ; it is either a true 
formula or a false formula ; by altering the conditions 
specified, substituting new conditions and applying the 
old formula, we do not disturb the truth of the law. 
The contingency lies elsewhere : it lies in our ignorance 
of the generating conditions." 4 



1 Three Essays on Religion, J. S. Mill, pp. 7, 16. 

2 Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, W. S. Lilly, p. 229. 

3 De 1' Esprit des Lois, Montesquieu. 

4 Problems of Life and Mind, G. H. Lewes, vol i, p. 375. 

31 



Prolegomena 

May we not return to and retain our definition of 
natural law as "the manifestation of the properties of 
matter, unorganized or organized, at rest or in 
motion"? We are now prepared to define a miracle. 
It appears a curious inadvertence on the part of theolo- 
gians that they should be willing to escape a difficulty 
by surrendering the distinctive character of the opera- 
tion they endeavor to explain. A miracle by being 
made entirely analogous to human exploits in an age 
when man has acquired a scientific control of natural 
agencies robs it of its essential, unapproachable, and 
stupendously recondite character; it places it remotely 
within a speculative probability that man by a little or 
a good deal more knowledge may some day do the 
same thing. Whereas we conceive it to be a more 
sound, absolute, and profound statement to say that a 
miracle is out of human power, so far as knowledge is 
power, at whatever period or height of development, 
skill, and learning he may reach. A true miracle is 
not quantitatively impossible at present to man, but is 
qualitatively unattainable by him at any time. Again, 
this device of making a miracle represent the power 
of God over natural law by a use of latent and more 
powerful and not entirely natural means, or by a 
withdrawal and diversion of law, simply contravenes 
and destroys any valuable respect for law at all, or is 
a compromise and admission to those who would 
make the miracles the trick of a sorcerer or the art of 
a genius advanced beyond his age by superior insight 
and experimental ingenuity. It fails to make a miracle 

3 2 



The Supernatural 

any more comprehensible, involving a vague and 
illimitable horizon of possible means or a suicidal and 
destructive contradiction of his own acts by the 
Almighty, who on occasion repeals laws he has him- 
self eternally erected. "Lex aeterna summa ratio in 
Deo existens." And while it fails to make a miracle 
any more comprehensible, it discharges from a miracle 
its ineffable and succinct essence of omnipotence, 
rather lowering it to the level of a transcendental 
triviality. But when we regard law as the manifesta- 
tion of the properties of matter a miracle becomes 
purely a creative act. No laws are overthrown in a 
miracle; rather it is a demonstration of law. New 
properties have been given to matter, and new laws 
appear at once; the old law disappears not because it 
is made inoperative or has been annulled or overridden 
or destroyed, but because it cannot come into play. It 
has been supplanted by a retinue of new laws flowing 
from those new properties which the creative power 
of God has suddenly brought into existence. This 
makes a miracle what it is and should be — a dis- 
tinctive mark and differential of God, the Creative 
Power. 

Now, this involves nothing unusual, or anything 
which thought has not become acquainted with. The 
idea of the honest theist involves as much as this. Mill 
writes : "Once admit a God, and the production by his 
direct volition of an effect which in any case owed its 
origin to his creative will [italics ours] is no longer a 
purely arbitrary hypothesis to account for the fact, but 

33 



Prolegomena 

must be reckoned with as a serious possibility." 1 But 
upon this position Mill's own absurd view of a 
miracle can be denied and rejected, and Hume's ob- 
jections, abstractly considered, repelled. Mill says: 
"The test of a miracle is : Were there present in the 
case such external conditions — such second causes, we 
may call them — that whenever these conditions or 
causes reappear the event will be reproduced? If 
there were, it is not a miracle ; if there were not, it is 
a miracle but it is not according to law ; it is an event 
produced without, or in spite of, law." Mill's diffi- 
culty seems to be to make a miracle sufficiently won- 
derful, and he conceives that there is but one way to 
do this, to put it outside of all possible reference to 
law, to make it inconceivable, and logically impossible. 
But invoke a creative act, itself neither inconceivable 
nor logically impossible, adding new properties to 
matter, or restoring old, and while the wonderfulness 
remains unabated — indeed, has rather gained a 
quality of majestic and supernal beauty — the reign of 
law remains undisturbed, its insistency unabated, its 
severity unmoved. The new miraculous phenomena 
proceed by law from the new property or properties 
created, because law is the manifestation of properties 
(ante) and the act of creation proceeds from God, 
who thereby performs a miracle, or, in other words, 
an act expressly and forever provided for in the con- 



1 Three Essays on Religion, J. S. Mill, p. 232. And we read in the Duke of 
Argyle's Reign of Law (p. 15) that "the very idea of a Creator involves the 
idea not merely of a Being by whom the properties of matter are employed, 
but of a Being from whose will the properties of matter are derived." 

34 



The Supernatural 

ception of God. Thus a miracle, to whatever extent, 
to quote the language of Locke, it is "above the com- 
prehension of the spectator, and in his opinion con- 
trary to the established course of nature," is itself a 
law in God, for it is the manifestation of the great 
incommunicable property of Godhead — creativeness. 
This gives us a test for miracles which we shall use in 
the discussions we are approaching. And again we 
are taught to regard the miracles in the domain of the 
mind — psychological transformations and alterations 
— as acts by which new properties are imparted to 
mind, old properties destroyed, or half emergent 
properties established and erected. And we are led to 
perceive a graded series of possible miraculous mani- 
festations, a series beginning with a creative act pure 
and simple, involving the highest incommunicable 
executive functions of divinity, functions declarative of 
the essence of divinity also, and running into miracu- 
lous interpositions by which properties in mind or 
matter which were buried, so to speak, below the 
visible surface of either were summoned to the surface 
and became active. Succeeding these come a group of 
miraculous acts, less remarkable in appearance, though 
connected by a chain of intermediate acts with the 
first two classes, whereby properties already observable 
in mind or matter are made conspicuous, are brought 
into regnant and forcible prominence. Creative force 
is involved in all the groups, but it becomes less and 
less intense as we descend the series. But why is it 
involved? Surely we all know that qualities in men, 

35 



Prolegomena 

in beasts, in plants can be strengthened, enlarged, and 
quickened by exercise, by nourishment, by stimulation, 
cultivation, preventive care, and example. This is 
true, but in all such cases the change is brought about 
by natural means. The changes produced in miracu- 
lous acts may be very like — indeed, superficially (to the 
eye, that is) inseparable from — the results effected by 
natural calculable agents. In miracles the process is 
absolutely supernatural, and, so regarded, the entire 
range of miraculous activity, from the unique creative 
act, imparting new properties to mind or matter, at its 
apex, to the calling forth of imperfectly developed 
properties and the reinforcement of already existing 
and determinable properties, at its base, is godlike 
and godly acts, and draws upon the property of God- 
head — creativeness. At this point we reach the super- 
natural, and a rule of detection for a miracle cannot be 
completed without a further definition of nature and 
supernature. 

Before passing to this matter we beg to call atten- 
tion to the virtual identity of an act of creation with 
an act of cancellation. They are, indeed, but comple- 
mentary phases of an expression of will, the obverse 
aspects of the same act. If lightness is imparted to 
iron it is tantamount to the removal of heaviness; if 
brilliancy is given to the mind it is equivalent to the 
disappearance of torpidity. Every property presup- 
poses its negative, and to what extent it is created or 
strengthened its negative is destroyed or weakened ; to 
what extent its negative is resumed it is abandoned. 

36 



The Supernatural 

As Emerson beautifully says, "Polarity, or action and 
reaction, we meet in every part of nature — in darkness 
and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of 
waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and 
expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of 
quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; 
in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in the undula- 
tions of fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and 
centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and 
chemical affinity." 1 We call attention to this thought 
here as enlisting some aspects of miracles other than 
the more obvious ones; we shall, however, in the un- 
folding of the doctrine of intention attempt to fasten a 
deep significance upon this "inevitable dualism" in 
nature. 

In defining supernature we prefer for the special 
purpose of this study to explain what we consider to 
be a process of supernature, and similarly what we 
regard as the essence of a natural process. A natural 
process is the interaction of two or more agents whose 
contacts are scientifically conceivable; a supernatural 
process is the interaction of two or more agents whose 
contacts are scientifically inconceivable. And by 
"scientifically conceivable" we mean explicable to our 
apprehension, whether the explanation be a real one 
or not; that is, we may often in natural processes as- 
sume states and motions which hypothetically explain 
a phenomenon, give a sensible and appreciable raison 
d'etre for it, though, were the actual state of the case 

1 Essay on Compensation, R. W. Emerson. 

37 



Prolegomena 

disclosed, something very different would be discov- 
ered. But whether the actual or the hypothetical ex- 
planation is given, in both cases the process is con- 
ceivably presented. The Newtonian theory of light 
as an emission in straight lines of ethereal corpuscles 
was scientifically conceivable, though it receded and 
was replaced by the wave theory of light, itself 
scientifically conceivable and scientifically true. In the 
Ptolemaic system of astronomy the movements of the 
heavenly bodies were explained by the false hypothesis 
of epicycles, which made those movements scientifically 
conceivable. Copernicus overturned that system by 
the assumption and proof of a solar system, and 
Kepler mathematically established it, and the new 
theory was also scientifically conceivable, and scientifi- 
cally true as well. There are certainly many processes 
in nature which we cannot truthfully say we know 
much about, but which we can imagine to our mind 
by an ingenious and skillful employment of what we 
do know so as to produce a satisfactory or approxi- 
mative sense of understanding. When we say polar- 
ized light will pass through a crystal in one position 
and will not pass through it in a position at right 
angles to the first, we can conceive that the crystal is a 
screen of holes which when turned to the light allow 
it to pass, when turned away from it shut it off by their 
opaque boundaries, and though this explanation of 
the process is coarse and wrong it makes the process 
or phenomenon scientifically conceivable. 

In supernatural processes, on the other hand, no 

38 



The Supernatural 

explanation can be given which makes the phenomena 
scientifically conceivable, because the contact of the 
agents producing the result cannot be understood, can- 
not be imagined. In nature the agents reacting on 
each other meet one another, and, being either matter 
or forms of energy by which matter is moved, their 
contact is conceivable even though we have no knowl- 
edge whatever of their real essence. In supernature 
we encounter phenomena which withstand analysis as 
reducing them to a comprehensible statement of a line 
of cause and effect. There is a sequence of events, but 
it is inexplicable how the elements of those events 
become or remain connected. For instance, in the 
incident of the transfiguration as described in the New 
Testament in the life of Christ, if it were not an 
illusion or an hallucination, it is inconceivable to any 
scientific mind how the elements of a bodily structure 
became united to the elements of the personalities or 
persons there mentioned, so that "there appeared unto 
them Moses and Elias talking with him." It is 
scientifically inconceivable how the elements of God's 
will became united to the elements of speech so that 
the boy Samuel heard his name and heard also a decla- 
ration of vengeance against Eli. It is scientifically in- 
conceivable how the agency of a force sufficient to 
divide a flood should be conjoined to the act of smiting 
the waters with a twisted mantle as when Elijah 
divided Jordan. It is scientifically inconceivable how 
the deadly influences that arrest life should unite with 
the act of steadying a trembling shrine, as when Uzzah 

39 



Prolegomena 

"put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of 
it: for the oxen shook it," when Uzzah perished for 
his temerity. It is scientifically inconceivable how the 
elements of life should be brought into union with 
dead bodies as at the climax and close of the cruci- 
fixion, as we read, "And the graves were opened, and 
many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came 
out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into 
the holy city and appeared unto many." It is scien- 
tifically inconceivable how the elements of evil spirits 
came into contact and possession of the material ele- 
ments of the bodies of swine, for "they went into the 
herd of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine 
ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and 
perished in the waters." 

In citing these instances we are not called upon to 
elucidate or establish or even believe them at all. We 
choose them as illustrating the distinction between a 
supernatural process and a natural process, and we 
amend and complete our definition of a miracle by 
saying: A miracle is a creative act, an act by which 
new properties are added to matter, old properties 
restored, or weakened properties strengthened, and 
that it proceeds by a supernatural process, namely, a 
process which is the interaction of two or more agents 
whose contacts are scientifically inconceivable. When 
the results of natural agencies resemble or exactly 
repeat the results obtained in miracles the separation 
of the two attendant trains of phenomena is made by 
an inquiry as to whether the process in either is 

40 



The Supernatural 

scientifically conceivable or not. If, as a matter of 
fact, a victim of hallucination has been restored to 
health in a moment of time by a prayer not heard or 
instigated by himself, and if in an identical instance 
the same phase and degree of the disease has been 
overcome by a physical and nervous shock, the con- 
trast and distinctive natures of a miraculous and 
natural cure seem to us, as far as we can apply 
methods of analysis, capitally shown. In the first 
case, a miracle has been performed, old properties 
have been restored by a process scientifically incon- 
ceivable; in the second, old properties have been re- 
stored by a process scientifically conceivable, for we 
are told by medical experts that the paralysis of delu- 
sion has been removed by sudden nervous shocks which 
reanimate torpid centers of volition and renew the 
flow of vitality through deserted and palsied tracks. 1 
To be sure, we run against an inconceivable hypothesis 
even here, in the last analysis, the action of mind in 
the realm of physical feeling and action, to which we 
shall soon return, but as an experimental fact this in- 
fluence is recognized as a scientific postulate and 
clearly furnishes a sharp contrast to the first case, 
where no medical experience of a technical character 
could possibly be retained as a reasonable explanation 
of the result. 

1 Dr. Brown -Sequard adopted the startling expedient of carefully conducting 
a patient, whose eyes were bandaged, to the end of a board projected horizontally 
from a considerable height, and then removing the bandage and deserting his 
patient. The victim of this hazardous experiment saw his great danger and by 
a supreme effort recovered his powers and retraced his steps restored. Charles 
Reade in Hard Cash has made dramatic use of a similar reaction in stupor or 
trance. 

41 



Prolegomena 

We may here call attention to the fact that science 
and scientific ways of looking at things will always 
antagonize and resist the supernatural ways of Chris- 
tianity for this very reason, that processes employed 
or accepted in the latter are from the nature of the 
case scientifically inconceivable, and it simply destroys 
the unity and claims of science to admit them. 
Science and religion — at least the phases of the latter 
represented in Christianity — cannot be reconciled; 
they may be made to throw light one upon the other; 
the facts of one or its ignorance of facts may be made 
helpful in supporting the assertions of the other — we 
have ourselves striven to make scientific argument and 
deduction tributary to revealed facts and statements 1 — 
but they cannot be cordially reconciled except by a 
show of forbearance and compromise which is neither 
sincere nor lasting, neither valuable nor honest. But 
this is of no consequence — this hostility is absolutely 
harmless in itself; it is a hostility of temperament 
alone, not of facts or principles; it is as inevitable as 
the existence of any other opposites in temper or moral 
constitution or emotional status — as joy, rage, deliber- 
ation, precipitancy, love, hate. These states are all 
usefully employed in elaborating the characteristic ex- 
pression of every man; a higher spirit than the spirit 
of science or the spirit of religion controls both, that 
is, the spirit of man. He avails himself of the re- 
searches made in the spirit of questioning, of skep- 
ticism, of scientific study and determination; he yields 

1 Analytics of a Belief in a Future Life. 
42 



The Supernatural 

where it is wise and necessary to the spirit of the 
balance, the telescope, the scalpel ; but he also retains, 
if he is well centered and carefully made, his suscepti- 
bility to the powers which that scientific spirit cannot 
estimate and will not recognize; he remains confident 
in an assent to facts scientifically inconceivable be- 
cause they are representative of that supernature 
which he craves and which science can never undo or 
depose. 

But there is a directly developed relation of incom- 
patibility between science and religion at that moment 
when either has so far advanced as to contradict the 
other on a question of fact. Now, it is with the proof 
of the fact of supernature — or a system involving 
scientifically inconceivable contacts — that we close this 
section ; and as we began by saying the positive asser- 
tion of the supernatural, as a fact, by religion, is 
clearly sustained, we close by presenting the evidence, 
believing that the whole structure of Christianity, as 
implying and relying on the supernatural, depends on 
the completeness and cogency of that evidence. This 
evidence of the supernatural is our own constitution, 
and its existence there is the sole reason why we 
appreciate the supernatural, appeal to it, or accept its 
manifestations in religion. It is shown in the union 
of body and mind as "the interaction of agents whose 
contacts are scientifically inconceivable." This is our 
definition of the supernatural itself, and this fact, so 
extraordinary, inexplicable, bewildering, and im- 
pressive, meets all the requirements of the definition, 

43 



Prolegomena 

is analogous to the phenomena of the supernatural in 
history, and replenishes with every new restatement 
and study our own realization of the supernatural, its 
possible agents and extent. If science at any time 
explains this union of mind and body, so as to make it 
scientifically conceivable, the collaterals of supernatural 
claims are destroyed ; if science to-day could do so, we 
for our part would abandon all belief in Christian 
miracles, Christian origins, and Christian predictions, 
promises, and hopes, so far as they need the super- 
natural for their support. 1 But here science is helpless. 
The keen scientific instinct perceives this arrest, and 
those observers who feel that at this point there is 
danger of forfeiture in the rule of nature as surrender- 
ing its sway to supernature give the enigma a scientific 
treatment which is intolerable and vicious. They are 
quite logical in claiming that we need a clear hypoth- 
esis to make practicable the task of inspecting in a 
scientific way this aberrant fact, but what scientific 
hypothesis shall that be? They say, with Professor 
Ferrier, "Matter is already in the field as an acknowl- 
edged entity — this both parties admit. Mind consid- 
ered as an independent entity is not so unmistakably 
in the field!" or with Professor Huxley, "The ma- 
terialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. 
For it connects thought with the other phenomena of 
the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of 



1 Sir W. Hamilton has said (Lectures on Metaphysics), "Should physiology 
ever succeed in reducing the facts of intelligence to a phenomena of matter, 

ehilosophy would be subverted in the subversion of its three great objects — 
rod, free will, and immortality." 

44 



The Supernatural 

those physical conditions, etc., etc. ; whereas the alter- 
native, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, 
and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of 
ideas;" in other words, is scientifically inconceivable, 
is supernatural. It is true this supernatural fact lies 
imbedded in nature and natural phenomena; we are 
so familiar with it that it passes unobserved, and its 
stupendous consequences are overlooked or forgotten 
or minimized. It is in young and old, learned and un- 
learned, animals and man, a signet on nature unique 
and ineradicable, symptomatic at least of a peculiar 
origin, and contrasted with everything else we behold. 
Now, what are the facts ? 

We find in ourselves — -for it is unnecessary to refer 
to the subject of mind in animals — this property of 
thought, the preeminent characteristic of mind, its 
highest activity, and commonly regarded as its sole 
prerogative. By thought we analyze conduct, deter- 
mine the scope and the rule of laws, examine and 
record phenomena, write history, judge ourselves, 
construct fabrics, beautify nature, devise inventions, 
and regulate and control men. Thought has created 
science, created philosophy, created poetry, created 
religion, has invested itself with a code of signs, vocal 
articulation which, passing through the air at certain 
rates of speed and conveyed by transmitted vibrations, 
produce physical effects which again become thought 
in some one outside of ourselves, in years beyond our 
time. Thought has arrayed forms of beauty and en- 
dowed them with living colors, so that emotion, itself 

45 



Prolegomena 

also in mind, has been awakened, and the will, another 
function of mind, invigorated or destroyed. Thought 
has compelled sound to knit itself into labyrinthine 
textures of accordant and contrasted notes, to display 
the wealth of imaginative pictures which, themselves 
resting in thought, by thought are projected into the 
minds of thousands and distributed through ages, 

"Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, 
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting; 
By turns they feel the glowing mind 
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined." 

Thought examines its own products, classifies and 
names them, describes its own states and predicts 
them. Thought arises in our minds, runs through 
manifold connections of ideas, devising a strange and 
glorious panorama of subtle and profound suggestions. 
Now, thought cannot be weighed nor pinched nor 
pushed nor pulverized nor measured nor decomposed. 
The terms by which we estimate matter cannot be 
applied to it, and the tests by which the constants of 
matter are determined have no reference to thought. 
Neither is thought heat or light or electricity or 
magnetism or chemical affinity or gravitation or 
cohesion; nor can you reduce it to any substantial 
relations with these as a similar thing. You cannot 
transmute thought into any of these, nor can you heat 
thought and make it expand, nor throw light upon it 
and make it shine, nor pass electricity through it and 
produce light, nor magnetize it and attract iron 
filings, nor put it into beakers, dissolve it in water, 

46 



The Supernatural 

and precipitate it with acids or alkalies; you cannot 
throw it into the air and expect to see it fall, nor 
break it in pieces and stick it together again by 
squeezing. It is not a mode of motion, nor can any 
conceivable motion make it. 1 

Yet thought never stirs within us, never begins its 
marvelous work, without a simultaneous movement of 
matter, without disorganization of organic compounds, 
without some change in our physical constants, so that 
when we think, the blood flows more rapidly, tissue 
is wasted, excreta increased, and our temperature 
raised. This is absolutely proven, and remains in- 
violable as a statement, to which there can be no 
exception. It is unnecessary to take any pains to 
prove this. It is a most popular fact made clear by 
physiological researches. Take a capital illustration. 
Dr. Angelo Mosso, of Turin, has demonstrated to the 
eye the absorption of blood by the brain from the rest 
of the body when the brain is employed in thought or 
is dreaming. The dilation and contraction of the arm 

\ A curious argument for the noncorporeal nature of mind, as quoted from 
Aristotle, is given by Sir W. Hamilton in his Lectures on Metaphysics. "Noth- 
ing bodily," says Aristotle, "can at the same time, in the same part, receive 
contraries. The finger cannot at once be wholly participant of white and of 
black, nor can it, at once and in the same place, be both hot and cold. But the 
sense (mind) at the same moment apprehends contraries. Wherefore it knows 
that this is first, and that second, and that it discriminates the black from the 
white. In what manner, therefore, does sight simultaneously perceive con- 
traries? Does it do so by the same? or does it by one part apprehend black, by 
another white? If it does so by the same, it must apprehend these without 
parts, and it is incorporeal. But if by one part it apprehends this quality, and 
by another that — this he says is the same as if I perceived this, and you that. 
But it is necessary that that which judges should be one and the same, and 
that it should even apprehend by the same the objects which are judged. Body 
cannot at the same moment and by the same part apply itself to contraries or 
things absolutely different. But sense (mind) at once applies itself to black 
and to white; it, therefore, applies itself indivisibly. It is thus shown to be 
incorporeal. For if by one part it apprehended white, by another part ap- 
prehended black, it could not discern the one color from the other; for no one 
can distinguish that which is perceived by himself as different from that which 
is perceived by another." 

47 



Prolegomena 

of a man by suffusion or abstraction of blood followed 
respectively the quiescent or active states of the mind. 
To calculate the product of 245x15 depleted the arm, 
and the instrument devised to record this depletion 
registered its exact amount. Dr. Minot describes one 
curious observation : "While the subject's arm was in 
the apparatus Mosso presented to him a few pages on 
which were pasted paragraphs in Greek and Italian 
indiscriminately. By watching the changes in the 
volume of the arm, Mosso was able to decide correctly 
when his friend was reading a Greek paragraph, be- 
cause to the greater mental effort corresponded a 
greater contraction of the vessels." 1 It is not over- 
stated by Buchner: "It is a law that brain and mind 
are necessarily mutually conditioned; indeed, that the 
size of the first as well as its form and material proper- 
ties stand in a fixed and strict relation to the intensity 
of the mental functions. This relation is so strong 
and unmistakable that the mind exercises an essential 
influence on the development and growth of the organ 
which serves it, and that this latter increases in 
strength and mass under increased mental activity in 
the same way as a muscle grows and is strengthened 
by use and exercise." 2 

Still, you cannot make thought material, and there- 
fore you cannot conceive how it can be generated by 
matter, for matter can only issue in new forms of 
itself, rearrangements and replacements; it can be- 

1 Changes in the Circulation, C. S. Minot, Popular Science Monthly, vol 
xvii, p. 309. 

8 Kraft und Stoff, L. Buchner, p. 141. 

48 



The Supernatural 

come the residence of energy, but thought fails to 
meet the requirements of the law of the conservation 
of energy, for you cannot make it into heat or light or 
sound, nor think of it as depending for its manifesta- 
tion on undulations of ether. Says Sir W. Hamilton : 
"All thought is a comparison, a recognition of simi- 
larity or difference, a conjunction or disjunction; in 
other words, a synthesis or analysis of its objects. In 
conception, that is, in the formation of concepts (or 
general notions), it compares, disjoins, or conjoins 
attributes ; in an act of judgment it compares, disjoins, 
or conjoins judgments. In each step of this process 
there is one essential element ; to think, to compare, to 
conjoin or disjoin, it is necessary to recognize one 
thing through or under another; and therefore, in 
defining thought proper, we may either define it as an 
act of comparison or as a recognition of one notion as 
in or under another." 1 How can you place such a 
thing as this in the categories of matter ? What, then, 
is this phenomenon — this conjunction of mind and 
matter? Is it not a process of supernature; is it not 
"the interaction of agents whose contacts are scientif- 
ically inconceivable" ? The materialists have suspected 
that the supernatural lay hidden in this stupendous 
alliance of mind and matter and have resisted the 
spiritualistic interpretation with bold assertions. 
Vogt says : "For natural history, on the other hand, 
the mind is scarcely immaterial, a principle separable 
from the body, but only a generic name for various 

1 Lectures on Logic, lecture i, Sir W. Hamilton. 

49 



Prolegomena 

functions which belong to the nervous system, in the 
higher mammals exclusively to the central nerve 
system, the brain, and which, like all other functions 
of the various organs of the body, are modified upon 
disturbance of the organ. If the organ, if the body to 
which it belongs disappears, then its functions also 
disappear ; if the body dies the mind also dies. Natural 
history recognizes no individual duration of the mind 
upon the death of the body." 1 And Buchner says: 
"The brain is bearer and producer, or, better ex-, 
pressed, the single cause of the spirit, of thought, but 
yet not an organ of secretion of the same. It produces 
something which is not thrown off nor which remains 
material, but which in the moment of production is 
itself again consumed." 2 But the weight of opinion 
is against them, their case is hopeless, and impartial 
observers deride so preposterous a position. This is 
a supernatural fact; it is the commonest fact of life, 
it is the only fact about which we can feel an absolute 
certitude, it is a fact upon which science in physiology 
and psychology has been extremely busy, uncovering 
new sides and more astounding displays of its con- 
stancy and beauty, and it remains a fact scientifically 
inconceivable, beyond the power of language to ex- 
press, and outside of analysis or synthesis. But if 
this coordination of mind and organized matter by 
our definition can be classed as a supernatural phe- 
nomenon, it cannot be regarded as an irrelevant, dis- 
persed, accidental, unaccountable, and unrelated inci- 

1 Thierseelen, C Vogt. 2 Kraft und Stoff, L. Buchner. 

So 



The Supernatural 

dent in nature. It has reference to a system whose 
norm it expresses, it becomes at least symptomatic of 
an order which it reflects, it must retain a connection 
with a group of conditions also supernatural, scientif- 
ically inconceivable, and yet real, existent, and perti- 
nacious. This system, order, group of conditions, this 
supernatural, is apparent in the very middle and arena 
of the natural, in ourselves; we represent it, we are 
thrown by our very composition into causal and 
effectual relations with it, we are compelled to assume 
it, and men always have assumed it where they have 
not abused their instincts or set aside their religion. 
And we are compelled to assume it, though our as- 
sumptions about it may be inadequate or selfish or 
barbarous, for we must recognize "not only the pos- 
sibility, but also the natural necessity, of an immense 
variety in the constructions which men's minds make 
regarding a supernatural world/' 1 Dr. Thompson 
says : "We must regard it as a whole related to its 
parts and also related to nature. We must thus 
give it a similar framework to that which we give the 
natural universe, although we exclude it from the 
latter. We are thus forced to construct a fictitious, 
symbolical, hypothetical, possible world of relations 
analogous to the world of nature." 2 Supernature lies 
superimposed upon nature. 

However that may be, we have aimed to show that 
as a fact the supernatural, upon our premises of 



1 Religious Sentiments of the Human Mind, D. G. Thompson, p. 40. 
» Ibid., p. 36. 



Prolegomena 

definition, exists here in the world of nature, that it 
must be regarded as expressive of a system of super- 
nature, somewhere removed from nature, or possibly 
influencing and reacted upon by nature in ways not 
altogether clear or definable. We would say, adapting 
words of Cardinal Newman, that this union of mind 
and body "is verily and indeed the coming in of the 
unseen world into this," and if, as we said at the head 
of this section, "the difficulty in thought to-day is the 
realization of the supernatural," then the study of this, 
union of mind and body is the proper and wholesome 
way of strengthening that power. By such study we 
shall apprehend its nature and be induced to suspect 
its origin. And to those who appreciate and declare 
its existence to-day, and in the secular events of his- 
tory, who would agree with Lilly "that we have a 
record in the annals of the world of a vast multitude of 
occurrences, as well attested as any facts can be, which 
are not referable to that sequence of phenomena called 
the laws of nature" 1 — to them a close scrutiny, con- 
ducted carefully by the aid of philosophy and science, 
of this opposition of mind and body, would reveal, 
as the Duke of Argyle would express it, that "all 
nature becomes supernatural, because all her elements, 
both in themselves and in their combination, are only 
conceivable as first established, and then employed by 
the powers of mind." 2 

1 Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, W. S. Lilly, p. 272. 

2 Reign of Law, Duke of Argyle. p. 9. Pascal's remark is apposite here: 
"Man is to himself the mightiest prodigy of nature; for he is unable to conceive 
what is body, still less what is mind, but least of all is he able to conceive how 
a body can be united to a mind; yet this is his proper being" (Hamilton). 

52 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

We conclude this section by reviewing the defini- 
tions we have worked out : 

i. Law is the manifestation of the properties of 
things. 

2. Miracle is a creative act involving a super- 
natural process, and is a demonstration of law, being 
a manifestation of the property of God — creative- 
ness. 

3. Nature is a system of natural processes, namely, 
those in which the interaction of two or more agents is 
scientifically conceivable. 1 

4. Supernature is a system of supernatural proc- 
esses, namely, those in which the interaction of two 
or more agents is scientifically inconceivable. 

Section II 

The Ordinates of Revelation 

The ordinates of a point are those distances upon 
two lines at right angles to each other from which 
lines produced until they intersect determine the posi- 

1 This definition of nature is, it seems to us, quite convertible with that pro- 
posed by Coleridge (Aids to Reflection, Moral and Religious Aphorisms, aphor- 
ism vi, comment). He says: "Whatever is representable in the forms of time 
and space is nature. But whatever is comprehended in time and space is 
included in the mechanism of cause and effect." Furthermore, as we have 
insisted that the evidence of the supernatural is found in the coalescence of 
mind and body, we have Coleridge's word for it that the mind can itself be 
considered supernatural. In the same place he says : ' ' And conversely, whatever, 
by whatever means, has its principle in itself, so far as to originate its actions, 
cannot be contemplated in any of the forms of space and time; it must, there- 
fore, be considered as spirit which is here supposed, and which we have agreed 
to understand under the name of morality or the moral state; for in this stage 
we are concerned only with the forming of negative conceptions, negative 
convictions; and by spiritual I do not pretend to determine what the will is, 
but what it is not — namely, that it is not nature. And as no man who admits 
a will at all can suppose it below nature, we may safely add that it is super- 
natural; and this without the least pretense to any positive notion or insight." 
Our definition of supernature covers, however, wider ground, and is more 
serviceable and less questionable. 

53 



Prolegomena 

tion of the point in a plane. Is it possible to use a 
similar language with any truth in reference to that 
singular fact in history which we call revelation, so 
that the ordinates of it being determined we can fix 
its position in time? Is it possible to determine the 
moral tensions, so to speak, in society, in the world at 
large, whose combined effect is to bring such a 
phenomenon about? Has such an event any relation 
to terrestrial conditions by which its advent might be 
discerned from their inspection? The world has had 
two revelations. Are we entitled to suppose that they 
have a human determinable aspect which explains their 
coming into the world when they did come, and which 
throws any light upon any possible revelation in the 
future — a revelation we may certainly expect if the 
process of revelation is to be continued to its legitimate 
results, namely, complete enlightenment, and if the 
predictions in the revelation of Christ are authentic 
and exact? Now, it seems certain that we can par- 
tially measure or express the connections of thought 
in the mind of the Revealer with his revelation, the 
supramundane view of revelation, the view on the 
other side, as it were, if we are inclined to take the 
word of revelation, as we have it, as luminous and 
adequate; and it is also certain that we can estimate 
the mental conditions, the sociological and moral ele- 
ments, of the times when revelation was vouchsafed. 
From a consideration of this data we believe we may 
fix the ordinates of revelation in the past as historical 
facts, and draw some relative or provisional conclu- 

54 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

sions as to when, in a very wide sense, we may look 
for another or more revelation. 

The revelation of the Old Testament was imparted 
at a time when, if the truth was to be maintained as to 
the attributes and singularity of God, a very great 
need had arisen for it, and the revelation of the New 
Testament was granted when, if social restraints, 
moral order, intellectual vigor, and human virtues 
were to be retained or assisted, a very great desire was 
felt for it. Of course there were internal veritable 
reasons for the second revelation arising from the 
formal provisions of the first, but we are engaged 
with a less theological and more generalized aspect of 
revelation. In the first case, the revelation was re- 
strictive and preparatory; in the second, it was unre- 
stricted and complementary. The force of need and 
desire as determining these two revelations is cal- 
culated by an inspection of the periods, the states of 
the times when they appeared, and is the human side 
of the phenomenon, the side which as human observers 
and critics we can detect and explain. But the motive 
forces which acted upon the Revealer to provide a 
revelation at a particular moment are not so obvious 
nor calculable. Yet we think it can be shown that we 
are permitted to name them, and the peculiarity of 
their nature is that while they are the same forces 
which obtain when we study the anthropo-historical 
side of revelation, they exist in exactly inverse ratio to 
these latter at the same moment. That is, when the 
need of revelation is apparent in history the desire in 

55 



Prolegomena 

God is uppermost, and when desire is apparent in 
history the need of revelation is realized in God and is 
the effective cause that produces it. Our ordinates, 
then, are need and desire. On what we shall term the 
anthropistic side need determines its own revelation 
and desire its own ; on what we call the theopistic side 
need and desire do the same, but when in anthropism 
need is strong, desire subordinate, in theopism need 
is subordinate and desire is strong; vice versa, when 
in anthropism desire is strong, need subordinate, in 
theopism desire is subordinate and need is strong. 
Here are important statements worthy of examination. 
The broadest and the most narrow conceptions as to 
the importance of a revelation must agree in their 
general outlines respecting its cause. A revelation as 
a message implies an author and an audience, and any 
imaginable relations between these as producing such 
a communication implies need and desire. For, 
whether exacted in supplication or bestowed in pity, 
there must have been a real necessity for it and a real 
desire craving it (anthropistic), or a necessity seen 
that it should be given and a desire felt to give it 
(theopistic). A revelation about something it is un- 
necessary to know or for which there is felt no genuine 
desire can, so long as we are considering responsible 
and benevolent agents, never take place. Mere igno- 
rance does not furnish a ground for revelation so long 
as the ignorance is neither very painful nor very dan- 
gerous. A revelation is influential and consolidated 
as it springs from necessity and answers desire. It is 

56 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

insisted upon because it is needed, and it is listened to 
because it is desired. 

But it is the relation between need and desire as 
oppositely manifested in the two factors of revelation, 
a revealer and a listener, as conditioning two sorts of 
revelation, that we wish also to consider; for when 
the revelation is needed by us it is desired by God, 
when it is desired by us it is needed by God. This 
proposition affords us technical means for classifying 
revelations, and can be applied even to the subordinate 
parts of the same revelation, and it opens up a new 
scope of inquiry as to the character and instruments of 
revelation appropriate to each class. We shall our- 
selves look at this more closely. 

The sensible and scientific way to treat this ques- 
tion, and the only way which will return any useful 
conclusions, is to examine the conditions under which 
the two revelations we have had were given. We 
claim that, from a human standpoint, the revelation of 
the Old Testament — the Mosaic — was a necessary, 
that of the New a desirable, one, and, with reverence 
in saying so, that, from a divine standpoint, the revela- 
tion of the Old Testament was desirable but that of 
the New necessary. The complexion, the tempera- 
ment, the color of the two revelations will be strongly 
contrasted. In a revelation of need elements of 
austerity, disciplinary and coercive measures, and a 
severity of moral dignity will be apparent, it will be a 
revelation of force and power ; in a revelation of desire, 
on the other hand, softer aspects are disclosed, love 

57 



Prolegomena 

enters into its tissue, and it throbs with the intensity 

of aspiration, hope, and endearment. 

The formal statement of the inquiry can be made 

diagrammatically : 

A ,, ( Old Testament Revelation, needed. 

Anthropism -j . ' . 

t New Testament Revelation, desired. 

rp, • j Old Testament Revelation, desired. 
I New Testament Revelation, needed. 
We shall discuss the Old Testament revelation in its 
double aspects, then the New Testament revelation in 
a similar manner, and both as briefly as the aims of 
this introduction will allow. 

There is one assumption at the start which we are, 
on every ground of reason, sobriety, and culture, en- 
titled to make, namely, that monotheism, a belief in 
one God, is distinctly the preeminent and wisest and 
noblest form of religious belief, and that when with 
monotheism is conjoined a lofty morality, accompanied 
by a trenchant and undeviating piety wedded to poetic 
and profound emotions of joy and worship, then the 
religion in which this association of ideas and feeling 
and practice dwells and is fostered should be the su- 
preme ideal of religious minds. This assumption 
made, we next find the Old Testament does display 
this ideal, perhaps in many places obscured (see 
Chapter IV in the body of this work) but still in other 
places quite clearly, and that it is most correctly esti- 
mated as a whole when this view of its contents, 
tendency, and result is taken. Says Canon Mozley: 
"In other nations, then, the ideas of justice, benevo- 

58 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

lence, purity, stay at an incipient stage, and never be- 
come more than half ideas ; in the Jewish alone is there 
moral progress — an advance, which begins and goes 
steadily on unchecked till it reaches the new or Chris- 
tian law. In the Jewish nation alone the law acts not 
only as a document, but as a guiding principle in the 
nation. There it is a light, a teacher ; it does not abide 
within its letter only, but comes out in the shape of 
comment or interpretation to suggest and inspire. It 
is accompanied and guarded by the great prophetic 
order, which carries on, in conjunction with the law, 
and in check upon it, a standing guidance and teaching. 
There is a moral element in the dispensation which 
has an intense and overruling force of its own, a free, 
unstunted growth by which it arrives at completion." 1 
Did any other religious movement which the human 
race inaugurate do the same? If it did not was not 
just such a revelation needed, and is not the measure 
of its need determined by the contrast of its import 
and consequences with the issues engendered in these 
religious movements which surrounded and competed 
with it, and also by our knowledge of the difficulty to 
supplant and efface intellectual, moral, and emotional 
error with truth. To that vast and constantly matur- 
ing womb of religious, metaphysical, and romantic 
thought — India — we may turn for some suggestions 
of the primitive inclinations and movements of the 
human mind. Professor Muller, whose profound and 
sympathetic insight into its religious life cannot be 

1 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, J. B. Mozley, p. 241. 

59 



Prolegomena 

doubted, says : "If we must have a general name for 
the earliest form of religion among the Vedic Indians 
it can be neither monotheism nor polytheism, but only 
henotheism, that is, a belief and worship of those single 
objects, whether semitangible or intangible, in which 
man first suspected the presence of the invisible and 
the infinite, each of which, as we saw, was raised into 
something more than finite, more than natural, more 
than conceivable; and thus grew in the end to be an 
asura, or a living thing ; a deva, or a bright being ; an 
amartya, that is, not a mortal, and at last an immortal 
and eternal being — in fact, a God endowed with the 
highest qualities which the human intellect could con- 
ceive at the various stages of its own growth." 1 This 
henotheism in India put on, according to Miiller, the 
form of polytheism; from polytheism it passed to 
monotheism, and again to a vague state of disquietude 
and unrest and mental inequilibrium which he calls 
atheism. The religious cravings of the race were 
baffled and dissatisfied, hunting in sky and air and 
earth for the strange, evasive principle of Godhead; 
poetry and symbolism and a luxurious epic fancy drove 
them on from this to that, with wavering and sleepy 
indecision, gathering at every station thoughts of 
beauty and clearness and depth and furnishing a 
largess of sparkling and lovely word-pictures. The 
tangible objects, "stones, bones, shells, flowers, berries, 
branches of wood, drops of water, lumps of earth, 
skins of animals, etc." (Miiller) ; the semitangible, 

1 Lectures on Origin and Growth of Religion, F. Max Miiller, p. 250. 
60 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

trees, mountains, rivers, the earth ; the intangible, "the 
sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the moon," led these 
industrious and ardent people to the infinite — to 
Aditi. But the infinite attained, it flits beneath 
numerous appearances, it rejects fixation, it is neither 
a stable principle nor an objective person, it is the 
dawn, "that portion of the sky from whence every 
morning the light and life of the world flashed forth." 
Again, the infinite — Aditi — is given a natural refer- 
ence to darkness and sin and immortality, for, "wher- 
ever we go, we find that one of the earliest imaginings 
of a future life arose from the contemplation of the 
daily coming and going of the sun and other heavenly 
bodies." In this advanced phase of feeling and think- 
ing the idea of law arose — Rita — which Miiller thinks 
"was used originally to express the settled movement 
of the sun, and of all the heavenly bodies," and finally 
"came to express all that is right, good, and true," and 
then through a wide sea of flowing and ebbing images 
pulsating here with sweetness, there contorted into 
far-fetched and broken guesses and riddles, we come 
to the end of Indian philosophy which the beautiful 
language of Miiller thus depicts : "Here is the end of 
the long journey which we undertook to trace; here 
the infinite, which had been seen as behind a veil in 
the mountains and rivers, in the sun and the sky, in 
the endless dawn, in the heavenly father, in Visvakar- 
man, the maker of all things, in Pragapati, the lord 
of all living creatures, was seen at last in the highest 
and purest form which the Indian intellect could 

61 



Prolegomena 

reach. Can we define him, they said, or comprehend 
him ? No, they replied ; all we can say of him is, No 
no! He is not this; he is not that; he is not the 
maker, not the father, not the sky or the sun, not the 
rivers or the mountains. Whatever we have called 
him, that he is not. We cannot comprehend or name 
him, but we can feel him; we cannot know him, but 
we can apprehend him ; and if we have once found him, 
we can never escape from him. We are at rest, we 
are free, we are blessed. They waited patiently for 
the few years before death would release them, they 
did nothing to prolong their old age, but at the same 
time they thought it wrong to put an end to their life 
themselves. They had reached what was to them 
eternal life on earth, and they felt convinced that no 
new birth and death could separate them again from 
that eternal self which they had found, or which had 
found them." 1 

Does this answer the requirements of human 
thought? The Indian psychological impulse ran its 
course, and it ended in this. Its life history we have 
traced ; it reached its stage of adult and final rest, and 
it could go no farther; it remains at that stage, and 
that stage is unsatisfactory and useless. 

And what has this deliquescent nucleus of faith 
come to? "Like the sacred fig tree of India, which 
from a single stem sends out innumerable branches 
destined to descend to the ground, and become trees 
themselves, till the parent stock is lost in a dense 

1 Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, F. Max Miiller, p. 346. 

62 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

forest of its own offshoots, so has this pantheistic 
creed rooted itself firmly in the Hindu mind, and 
spread its ramifications so luxuriantly that the sim- 
plicity of its root-dogma is lost in an exuberant out- 
growth of monstrous mythology." 1 Now, what was 
the social state of this Indian society, which re- 
plenished its springs of feeling with this vaporous 
philosophy? Was it happy and progressive, did it 
carry the germs of intellectual life, of scientific daring 
and remorseless self-stimulation, political prowess, and 
literary liberty? We think not. In the earliest ages 
of their national life, when they inhabited the Punjab, 
according to J. Talboys Wheeler, they formed a 
patriarchal and agricultural community. It was 
neither distinguished by power nor moral nor spiritual 
eminence. Its records are almost worthless, a tissue 
of dreams, fiction, story-telling, and figurative rhap- 
sodies. Succeeding the Vedic age came the Brah- 
manic, and in this age the system of castes was insti- 
tuted. The castes were: i. Priests; 2. Soldiers; 
3. Merchants and farmers; 4. Slaves. Below these 
was a nondescript population who were treated as out- 
casts and who appear as the slaves of the Sudras. 
The poison of slavery infected the veins of public life, 
the manhood of the individual was debased, the gran- 
deur of the primal origin from God was forgotten, and 
the race and the system passed into the sloth of in- 
decent habits and spoiled imaginations. Wheeler 
says : "The evils which have resulted from the estab- 

1 Non -Christian Religious Systems, Hinduism, Monier Williams, p. n. 

63 



Prolegomena 

lishment of a Brahmanical hierarchy have indeed far 
exceeded those which have followed the establishment 
of any other ecclesiastical ascendency." Indian 
thought is very remarkable and much of it very tire- 
some, but in itself and in its history and results it has 
made clear to all unprejudiced minds that a revelation 
was needed, and very much needed, so far as it — In- 
dian thought — affects to offer claims as a substitute for 
that revelation. Remember the true words of Canon 
Mozley: "There is a sense which is neither fanatical 
nor carnal in which the Bible may be said to be the 
charter of human rights ; it has endowed man with an 
individuality which he can never lose and which rulers 
must respect;" and again: "Out of no philosophy has 
this high estimate of man as such come; it has come 
straight from revelation. There in the relation of 
man to God is the origin of this great change of rank. 
Philosophy did not put man in communion with God, 
because the deity of philosophy was no object of wor- 
ship, and there was no rank gained by communion 
with idols; but communion with the Universal Being 
gave man position, exalted him, and clothed him with 
honor." 1 This is the point keenly stated. Communi- 
cation with God, however inconceivable (see "Super- 
nature," ante), was a necessity, if the highest pos- 
sible prestige, exaltation, and illimitable possibilities 
were to be imparted to man. It was not simply 
necessary because a belief in one God is true, but be- 
cause it inculcated, by a magnificent concentration of 

1 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages. 

64 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

interest in man as the pivotal and extreme end in 
nature, motives of the most perfect and the most fear- 
less action. Did the cultivated polytheism of the 
Greeks supply the place of revelation ? Baring-Gould 
says: "Beautiful and grand as is the ethical doctrine 
of Greek polytheism, as a system it is faulty. It 
viewed man only in the light of his relation to other 
men, and wholly omitted to see him in his relation to 
himself. Consequently there was no check provided 
against that immorality which is not political. He was 
ruled in his dealings with the commonwealth ; he was 
free to do what he liked as an individual. Licentious- 
ness knew no bounds, for religion had not attempted 
to check it; few could be found who did not cheat 
the state as opportunities were afforded ; no one could 
trust his neighbor; and Greek shamelessness, wanton 
debauchery, cupidity, and lying became proverbial." 1 
No one can truthfully deny this. 

Did Persia supply the place of revelation? Ad- 
mirable and noble as is the religion of the Zend-Avesta, 
it did not possess the forcible and inveterate splendor 
of a divine communication; neither was it proof 
against the entrance of polytheism; it was a lofty 
aspiration, but it failed in authority, as all natural 
religions do, and it rested upon no intellectual definite- 
ness, no precision and undeviating tendency; it was 
not a system displaying principles, and above all dis- 
playing a supernatural force. The Zend-Avesta "is a 
liturgy — a collection of hymns, prayers, invocations, 

1 Origin and Development of Religious Belief, S. Baring -Gould, vol. i, p. 223. 

65 



Prolegomena 

thanksgivings. It contains prayers to a multitude of 
deities, among whom Ormazd is always counted su- 
preme, and the rest only his servants." 1 Did Egypt 
supply the place of revelation? It could not. It was 
a most expanded system of pantheistic polytheism, 
and its fecundity in gods was as striking as the fertility 
of its great Nile valley. Did China supply the place 
of revelation? What had it to offer? A philosophy 
of vague spiritualism overlaid by a rigorous formalism 
which contemplated only the maintenance of social 
obligations, and looked no higher than the convenient 
commonplaces of social amity and national stability. 
Did Scandinavia supply the place of revelation? 
Surely not. Its religion was the rude though manly 
ethics and dreams of a boisterous and violent com- 
munity. It exulted with noble delight in feats of 
arms, warriors' battles, and the tumultuous excitement 
of war. Poetry and the subtlety of love blended with 
its sterner humor, and fair maidens move divinely 
through its halls of revelry and combat. Its gods were 
gods of fight and wassail, its heaven the Walhalla of 
heroes. Did the negro or the Mexican or the red 
man? It is sheer lunacy to ask. Were phantoms of 
horror and grotesque myths and dripping idols to 
supply a revelation which should build upon the earth 
a fabric founded in an apprehension and an assent to 
righteousness, and whose rising pinnacles pierce the 
zenith of poetry and prediction? We cannot refer to 
Mohammedanism, for that was itself an issue of the 

1 Ten Great Religions, J. F. Clarke, p. 187. 

66 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

Hebraic dispensation. Its own force and power were 
involved in the emphasis and incommunicable energy 
of the Mosaic message. 

Does it not, then, appear proper to regard this reve- 
lation as one of necessity, if those elements of thought 
and character, those tendencies of national life, which 
it evinced and encouraged were to be bred into the 
world at all? And how forcibly this appellation is 
justified and recommended when we examine its in- 
ternal character and history! The Mosaic monothe- 
ism ran counter to the inclinations of men; it was 
thrust upon the Jew; he was brought under its pro- 
visions and its supervision by iron rules and minute 
directions; it coerced him into the acceptance of a 
narrow though elevating doctrine; it was made a 
matter of life and death that he accept it, promulgate 
it, and perpetuate it. The whole phenomenon 
of the Old Testament revelation forces upon the 
mind the impression of necessity, as if this dogmatic 
assertion was made under great difficulties, against 
many opposing influences, and athwart the growth 
of human nature itself, and its position maintained 
by the use of terrifying and tremendous demon- 
strations. The Old Testament vibrates with the voice 
of God, and it is a voice compelling, alarming, and 
threatening; it resists the foibles of flesh with death, 
its weaknesses with denunciation, its prayers with 
scorn. See how the Jew was tied hand and foot with 
preservative and separative rites and rules; he was 
stamped impregnably with the seal of God's choice 

6 7 



Prolegomena 

and led on in an iron path to bring to distant ages the 
truth he was compelled to retain. And with all these 
hedges and restrictions, with all this wonderment and 
soul-awing accompaniments of flame and cloud, voice 
and prophet, signs and portents, the overmastering 
impulses of man would scarcely yield, "their history 
from the exodus to the captivity is one of constant 
relapse, in spite of every precaution" (Baring-Gould). 
Under the flagellations of pestilence this people re- 
turned to their faith; under the breath of prosperity 
and peace they rebelled. To keep them intact, to save 
them from the dissolving tides of ethnic contamina- 
tion which flowed around them, they were bidden to 
be cruel, they were encouraged in extermination, the 
passions of ferocity were kindled and fed, but always 
utilized toward securing the continuance of that idea, 
God and his moral relations to men. Strange para- 
dox! (See Chapter IV in body of this book.) The 
entrance into human incidents of a superhuman and 
presumably benign power which lost in part its essen- 
tial qualities, or seemed to lose them, in its employ- 
ment of man's savage instincts for the object of its 
own perpetuation ! Is there not here the plain adver- 
tisement that somehow or other this idea and worship 
of one God had to be forced into the world even at the 
expense of those attributes with which reason endows 
the idea itself? We must regard it as the proclama- 
tion of the existence of necessity, beyond all compari- 
son overwhelming and extraordinary, that this idea 
and worship should enter human affairs when it did, 

68 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

and that unless it did so enter it was not likely to enter 
at all. And it is clear at this point of time to see what 
that necessity was. It was the necessity of certainty, 
invulnerable certainty, that a God did exist, that he 
was a unit, that he was a Creator, that he regarded 
men, that the human species had immediate organic 
scientific relations with him, that he was the totality of 
religious ideals. How was such a certainty to be at- 
tained ? Thought could not do it. Look at the wilder- 
ness of philosophies — atomists, skeptics, materialists, 
spiritualists, pantheists, and their endless combinations, 
developed here, lopped there, grafted on each other, 
grown on various soils, some bearing flowers in an 
atmosphere asphyxiated with despair and others 
blooming in a sunshine of self-indulgence ; all more or 
less interesting, some attractive, some beautiful, all 
claiming irrefragably your attention; endless profu- 
sion, a tangle of notions, arguments, assumptions, 
pictures, and deliria. And what were men to accept? 
That which they felt they wished to or could accept. 
Without revelation religion is a matter of race, family, 
temperament, temperature, climate, education, physi- 
ognomy, digestion. You are a stoic to-day, an 
epicurean to-morrow ; to-day you look upon the world 
as blind fate, to-morrow as a web of fancies changing 
with the kaleidoscope of your own conditions; or in 
the stages of dejection we with the poet on Ben Nevis 

"look o'erhead 
And there is sullen mist — even so much 
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread 

6 9 



Prolegomena 

Before the earth, beneath us — even such, 
Even so vague is man's sight of himself! 

... all our eye doth meet 
Is mist and crag, not only on this height 
But in the world of thought and mental might !" 

The need was some assertion written on character, on 
history, on literature, which overruled, by its austere 
deliberation, set purpose, and formidable accompani- 
ments, all conjecture and experiment. The touch of 
God, resolute, pitiless, compelling, was needed to 
stiffen man, as it were, into a rigid posture of worship. 
Where is that assertion made, and where is that touch 
given ? In the Bible, the assertion ; in the Jewish race, 
the touch. 

Of the Bible Ewald has said it contains "works in 
which the highest sublimity of historical contemplation 
is balanced by the exactest and soberest description of 
human events and affairs, and in which one seems to 
behold a living account of the working of the true 
God throughout all human history, without on that 
account losing a correct and (so far as the means 
afforded) faithful historical picture of man and his 
deeds." 1 And Coleridge has written: "When we 
reflect how large a part of our present knowledge and 
civilization is owing, directly or indirectly, to the 
Bible; when we are compelled to admit, as a fact of 
history, that the Bible has been the main lever by 
which the moral and intellectual character of Europe 
has been raised to its present comparative height; we 

1 The History of Israel, H. Ewald, vol, i, p. 54. 

70 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

should be struck, methinks, by the marked and 
prominent difference of this book from the works 
which it is now the fashion to quote as guides 
and authorities in morals, politics, and history;'' 
and again : "Herein the Bible differs from all the 
books of Greek philosophy, and in a twofold manner. 
It doth not affirm a divine nature only, but a God ; and 
not a God only, but the living God." 1 

Of the Jewish race Baring-Gould writes : "The Jew 
to this day has remained, wherever cast, isolated from 
all others, unabsorbed by other races." 2 And Heine 
with expressive eloquence describes this peculiar isola- 
tion. He writes : "Mais ce genie de Mo'ise differait 
du genie egyptien en ce qu'il ne formait pas ses 
oeuvres d'art de tuiles et de granit ; non, s'il construisait, 
lui aussi, des pyramides c'etaient des pyramides 
d'hommes, il ciselait des obelisques humains, il prit 
une pauvre tribu de bergers, la petrit entre ses mains 
et en forma un peuple capable de braver egalement 
les siecles, un peuple grand et saint et eternel, un 
peuple de Dieu propre a servir de modele a tous les 
autres peuples et a. devenir meme le prototype de 
l'humanite entiere: il crea Israel! A bien plus juste 
titre que la poete romain, cet artiste, fils d'Amran et de 
la sage-femme Jochevit, peut se vanter d'avoir eleve 
un monument fait pour survivre a toutes les creations 
d'airain!" 3 

Furthermore, there was no desire for this revelation 

1 Aids to Reflection, The Statesman's Manual, S. T. Coleridge. 

2 Origin and Development of Religious Belief, S. Baring -Gould. 

3 De f Allemagne, vol. ii, p. 305. 

71 



Prolegomena 

from the human side (anthropistic) ; it awed, fright- 
ened, and repelled. It stands alone in representation 
of a faith delivered to a peculiar people who by turns 
dreaded and exulted in it, but desire for it was absent. 
It was a possession which was irksome and annoying, 
it repressed natural instincts or tended to repress them, 
and seemed an unmitigated dreariness. Certainly its 
high character awoke the tuneful and expressive piety 
of poets and rhapsodists and it burned on the lips of 
prophets in phrases of transcendent beauty. It re- 
mained, however, closeted with this people ; it was not 
desired by the world, it did not subjugate the nations, 
though its strange influence doubtless mingled with 
the currents of thought which flowed through or 
around it. 

But, theopistically considered, it was a revelation of 
desire. God wished it, man needed it. There are two 
ordinates of revelation, desire and need; the first 
propels or attracts revelation, the second demands or 
commands it. The character of a revelation is de- 
termined by its human side : if it is needed by men it 
is apt to be a revelation of force, power ; if it is desired 
it is apt to be a revelation of love. The impetus of a 
revelation is determined by its godly side: if it is 
desired by God it is apt to be progressive and de- 
liberate; if it is needed by God it is apt to be rapid. 
And in both, character and impetus are more and more 
true to these standards, as the ordinates — desire and 
need — vary inversely in subject and object — God and 
man. We have called the Old Testament a revelation 

7 2 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

of need anthropistically, and hence a revelation of 
force; we say theopistically it was a revelation of de- 
sire, and hence progressive and deliberate. Was the 
Old Testament revelation desired by God? It must 
have been, otherwise it could not have arisen. There 
was no desire in man for the Old Testament revela- 
tion; there could not have been — there was a great 
need. Desire for it must have rested in God. An ap- 
prehension, piercing and indescribable, of man's great 
need of it produced that desire; nay, the very act of 
creating man (however that creation is interpreted or 
understood) was an expression of desire, and was also 
inferentially and actually the beginning of the revela- 
tion. What that desire was in the wide circumference 
of its feeling and aims who shall say? All thinking 
has been busy with that question since the world began. 
The last revelation alone will fully answer it. In its 
germ that first revelation was intended to be a revela- 
tion of delight because it sprang from desire, but it 
soon, in some way, encountered the need of man for it, 
and then it assumed secondary and less refined and 
delicate aspects, becoming a system of coercion, an 
ethical code, a province and constitution of spiritual 
culture and manhood, by which man might be retained 
and not lost for the great purposes of his creation. In 
this stage the primal desire parted with its ineffable 
character, and put on more commonplace, at least 
definable and natural, forms. The Old Testament 
revelation, then, expressed God's desire, because by it 
"he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a 

73 



Prolegomena 

law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that 
they should make them known to their children: that 
the generation to come might know them, even the 
children which should be born: who should arise and 
declare them to their children: that they might set 
their hope in God, and not forget the works of God" 
(Psa. 78. 5-7). This revelation must have arisen in 
desire, for its form humiliates God, the ideal and con- 
ception of God is vulgarized by the Old Testament, 
humanized and, in a sense, paganized. The untrans- 
latable essences of Godhead have undergone pollution 
in the transcript, in the narration of the Bible itself, 
and a reproach has been cast upon God by a revelation 
which, passing through finite processes, is not always 
clear, is not always noble. Strenuous desire only 
could have constrained God to assume these vocative 
and hurried phrases, this mutilated and purloined 
representation. 

Now, the revelation of the New Testament, re- 
garded from its divine side, is one of need, but from 
its human side is one of desire. Man yearned for a 
revelation ; the Jewish world hesitated in forlorn inde- 
cision, waiting for the Messiah. They followed in 
distracted multitudes the vain pretensions of charlatans 
and public teachers. "Each region, each rank, each 
sect; the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Palestinian, 
the Samaritan, the Pharisee, the lawyer, the zealot, 
arrayed the Messiah in those attributes which suited 
his own temperament" (Milman). The delay of the 
expected revelation was injurious to the nation ; it was 

74 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

falling away into dissidence and speculation, sects were 
arising, discontent was prevalent, and under the yoke 
of foreign Roman rule the compressed fanaticism of 
an egoistic people was gathering an intense virulence 
and power. They looked hither and thither, and gazed 
into the sky expecting an apocalypse to break forth in 
showers of splendor from its silent depths. The 
Gentile world desired a revelation — old religions were 
tumbling into ruins, or, dressed in ritualistic glory, 
concealed their hollowness before eyes which were 
tired and careless. The vaticinations of sibyls and the 
dreams of a spiritualistic and contemplative philosophy 
heralded a golden age, a new Saturnian reign, and the 
limpid hexameters of Virgil expressed the vague 
prognostications of men's souls : 

"Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas; 
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo ; 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; 
Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto." 

But on the side of God this revelation of the New 
Testament was a revelation of necessity. It was the 
fulfillment of a promise; that promise implicated God 
in human affairs, it attached God to man by the articles 
of a contract, and its peremptory claims seem more and 
more emphasized as we read the story of that Jewish 
race who carried the first and were permitted to exact 
this second revelation. The second revelation was 
foreshadowed in the first, its aspects were developed 
in symbol in the first, its outlines and scope were built 
into the characters and events of the Jewish history, 

75 



Prolegomena 

and expectation for it grew into "that larger hope of 
the salvation of Israel from all evils, the realization 
of perfect reconciliation with Jehovah, and the felicity 
of the righteous in him, in a new order of things free 
from the assaults of hostile nations and the troubling 
of the wicked within the Hebrew community." The 
first revelation mirrored the coming of the second. 

The first and second revelations were consentaneous, 
mutually identified, and potentially simultaneous with 
God. But anthropistically they were not, they could 
not be, introduced upon the earth until the human 
ordinates, so to speak, placed them in time, and these 
human ordinates did not coexist ; that is, on the human 
side necessity and desire were not both with equal in- 
tensity manifest in human nature at the same time. 
Hence as a revelation cannot come upon the earth until 
the proper reaction, so to speak, is provided to meet 
the impulse from which it (the revelation) sprang, 
these two revelations historically were separated, the 
first, that of the Old Testament, being precipitated by 
the need in man of it, that of the second by desire in 
man for it. The need of a revelation was very urgent 
in the beginning of ethnic development, but there was 
no desire. The desire for a revelation was constrain- 
ing and effectual in the year i of our era, but there 
was no imperative need. That is, while the need 
would be eventually seen, and was included in that 
first primeval need by which the first revelation was 
itself ushered upon the world, it did not exist so con- 
spicuously as desire, and therefore did not give the 

7 6 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

characteristics or determine the nature of this second 
revelation. A revelation of need is applied from out- 
side, is forcibly introduced into the circle of human 
events, is retained in the world against rejection and 
abuse and natural accidents by a system of rules, 
observances, and special dispensations. It is apt to be 
simple and narrow and unbending, it fosters a spirit 
of pugnacity, and yields under the exigencies of cir- 
cumstances to equivocal methods so as to insure its 
permanency and exclusiveness. A revelation of desire 
is invited from within, and comes as a response to 
eager and excited prayers, or as a consolation to vague 
but, on the whole, exacting and feverish inquiry. It 
is compassionate and attractive, and sways the mind 
by innate qualities of beauty, by its reasonable appeals, 
by its wide sympathy, its forbearance, its benignity, 
its importunity and genial and profound culture. It 
advances by the impetus of its rapid assimilation, by 
the hearts it blesses and the understandings it en- 
lightens, and its instrumentalities are properly persua- 
sion and example and good works. A revelation of 
need appears in barbaric and rude ages or among 
ignorant and unrestrained natures; it invests itself in 
a code and preserves its essence by an encasement of 
rules and penalties. A revelation of desire appears in 
better informed and more advanced days among 
people who are self-governed and are able and willing 
to submit themselves to laws of conduct, laws whose 
force is their own justice and perfection ; it becomes a 
series of ethical and noble propositions, and is pre- 

77 



Prolegomena 

served by its own adequate adjustment to the higher 
or the highest requirements of the heart and mind. It 
is apt to present persons or lovable characters to the 
gaze and affection of men, and it wins humanity by 
promises of help and succor and friendship. Distinc- 
tions of this sort can be seen in all systems or entities 
which are raised upon the foundation of need or desire, 
whether in religion or governments or educations or 
temperaments. The religion of Mohammed was one 
of need; it extricated a race from a foul and foolish 
idolatry, but it was thrust upon the nations; it was a 
religion of force and subjugation. "The sword," it 
said, "is the key of heaven and of hell. One drop of 
blood shed in the Lord's battle, one night spent under 
arms, are of greater account than two months of fast- 
ing and prayer. Woe to him who goes not to the 
fight: his place shall be hell" (Koran). The religion 
of Buddha was a religion of desire; it came with 
gentleness and winning sweetness and sought to 
nourish human hearts with a rule of life which they 
could love and remember with delight. Its success 
was due to its coalescence with men's deeper hopes and 
minds. Buddha means "the awakened," "the en- 
lightened." Of Mohammed and Gautama it has been 
said : "The former propagated his religion by the 
merciless edge of the sword; the latter by the per- 
suasive voice of the missionary. The sanguinary 
career of the Islamite was lighted by the lurid flames 
of burning cities ; the peaceful progress of the Buddhist 
was illuminated by the cheerful faces of the sick in 

78 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

monastic hospitals and by the happy smiles of travelers 
reposing in Dharmasalas by the roadside." 1 

A government of monarchical absolutism is a govern- 
ment of need ; it is a coercive system and one of "dis- 
ciplinary minuteness." Dr. Wallace says of Russia: 
"We see the central power bringing the local adminis- 
trative organs more and more under its control, till at 
last it succeeds in creating a thoroughly centralized 
bureaucratic organization." 2 And that this was neces- 
sary he says : "We need not attempt to decide whether 
it is better for humanity that Russia should exist as a 
nation, but we may boldly assert that without a 
strongly centralized administration Russia would 
never have become one of the great European 
Powers." A government of desire expresses the more 
profound instincts, and responds to the best aspira- 
tions of men, and is a free republic whose strength is 
in the popularly recognized justice of its principles, 
and the mutual toleration and self-respect of its mem- 
bers. Individuality and invention are repressed in a 
government of need, they are nurtured and employed 
in a government of desire. 

An education of need is one of stocks and whipping 
posts, impositions and canings, rules and fines; it be- 
longs to early ages, either in society or in the indi- 
vidual. An education of desire is based upon a thirst 
for knowledge, recognition of its value, and reverence 
for its teachers. It is neither intricate in its exactions 



1 Cunningham, quoted by Hardwick.Christ and Other Masters, p.i57. footnote. 
8 Russia, M.Wallace, p. 197. 

79 



Prolegomena 

nor its methods, but it is boundless in its aims. It se- 
cures the fealty of its students by its own beauty. 

A temperament of need is one that must be governed 
by bit and bridle; of desire, one that loves to control 
itself, and moves with celerity in proper channels of 
its own accord. 

In these comparisons it is evident that desire is 
superior in its moral form to need, but we must insist 
that as mortals we can never free ourselves from the 
implications of need; that strong government, laws,, 
repression, penalties, machinery, and forms are in- 
definitely established and can never be wisely aban- 
doned. Nay! more profoundly, desire results from 
need, but it is need self-recognized. Need is the sign 
of the fall, desire the token of restoration. 

In the light of these thoughts a few words more as 
to the revelation of the Old and New Testaments, as 
revelations of need and desire. In both revelations 
God enters the arena of human affairs, mingles, as it 
were, with the current of human thought, and addresses 
and directs men. But in what contrasted ways! In 
the first revelation he is a voice, a light, the breath of a 
storm, the conflagration of a tree, the spirals of a 
moving cloud, a phantom of vanishing parts, an unseen 
presence, a devastation passing through the midnight 
streets, a splendor and terror in the sky. God in the 
Old Testament moves among the races with illimitable 
powers, strange purposes, a grand peremptory and un- 
deviating action. Far-off ends, glorious futures which 
shine behind the vague language of great promises, 

80 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

are interspersed with menaces, visitations, exacting 
laws, inflexible demands to exterminate the heathen, 
and magnificent portents and interpositions to save the 
chosen race. The whole history is wonderful in its 
progress, its persistent evidence of purpose, direction, 
and extraneous control. It is a patent exhibition of 
some extraordinary sagacity and sensitive design 
which is manipulating a rude people and thrusting for- 
ward mighty leaders for an inexorable denouement. 
The Old Testament resounds with the voice of a 
supernatural master commanding necessary things; 
it reveals a marvelous power forcing refractory ma- 
terials into a necessary mold ; it unfolds in mystic elo- 
quence the necessary issue of all this preparation and 
discipline; and it concentrates stupendous agencies 
upon the accomplishment of necessary ends. It is a 
revelation of need. Need is written all over it. Need 
is seen in the first provisions made for the safety of 
Noah, it is seen in the test and trial of Abraham, it is 
seen in the liberation of Israel from bondage, in the 
pilgrimage, in the wildnerness, in the law, in the 
temple, in the institution of kings, in the prophets, in 
the bondage of Babylon, in the restoration. 

Above the vivid picture and record of human his- 
tory, its natural incidents, its portraiture of men and 
women, its chronicle of ethnic changes, of the tumults, 
changes, and intercourse of nations, above the episodes 
of children and the loves of men, is written need. In 
the order of the Commandments, in the minutiae of 
the law, in the establishment of communal life, in the 

81 



Prolegomena 

ceremonial of the temple, in the enforcement of in- 
dividual responsibility, in the rhapsodies and prophetic 
outbursts of sage and poet and seer, is written need. 
It is need which gives the message its urgency, it is 
need which stamps it with power, it is need which in- 
vests it with deathless interest, it is need which sup- 
plies it with supernatural forces, it is need which fills 
it with types and symbols, invigorates it with wisdom, 
and paints it with poetry. 

But what appears more and more plainly beneath 
the interblending scenes and chapters is the figure and 
promise of a preordained and presanctified Nature, a 
Being of human parts devoted to the interests of 
Israel, absorbing them in himself, a Messiah for whom 
desire grows as the evils of time accumulate. The 
Messiah becomes more and more vivid as the moment 
for the arrival of the revelation of desire approaches. 
He is barely discerned in the generalized token to 
Abraham that "In thee shall all families of the earth 
be blessed," and in the dying invocation of Jacob, "The 
scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver 
from between his feet, until Shiloh 1 come: and unto 
him shall the gathering of the people be;" he is form- 
ally heralded in the type stories of Joseph, Moses, 
David, and Joshua; his lineage becomes more fixed 
when we read that "In that day there shall be a root of 
Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; 
to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be 

1 For a critical and brief discussion of this word, which the best students 
do not regard as a name of the Messiah, see Briggs's Messianic Prophecies, p. 
95, footnote. 

82 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

glorious;'' in the prophets he comes nearer and his 
lineaments, his purposes and character assume un- 
certain and grand dimensions in the lyrical outburst 
and epic grandeur of the writings of the exile. Dr. 
Briggs traces this development of the Messianic idea 
with skill and learning. He says: 'The Messianic 
prophecy of the Old Testament advances through the 
centuries of the history of redemption, from the 
simplest germs to the most complex conceptions; and 
yet there is a unity in the midst of the great variety of 
representations, and a harmony in the manifold de- 
velopment of the theme, so that the whole constitutes 
an organism of redemption, the Messianic ideal given 
by divine revelation to guide the people of God in their 
advance toward the goal of history." 1 

At the climax of intense expectation on the part of 
the Jews, at the moment of mental unrest and longing, 
when a great geographical and political unity exists, 
the revelation of desire is unfolded. The Messiah is 
discovered in it contrasting sharply in person and 
accessories with all that the imagination of the Hebrew 
had prefigured, yet fulfilling those Orphic predictions 
which had announced him, and which, more closely 
examined, depict an advent in which all flesh should 
participate and which all men should welcome. Says 
Dr. Briggs: "In Jesus of Nazareth the key of the 
Messianic prophecy of the Old Testament has been 
found. All its phases find their realization in his 
unique personality, in his unique work, and in his 

1 Messianic Prophecies, C A. Briggs, chap. xv. 

83 



Prolegomena 

unique kingdom. The Messiah of prophecy appears 
in the Messiah of history/' 

Now, note the characteristics of this revelation of 
desire. God enters the second revelation, but he is no 
longer dim, terrifying, and phantasmal; he is a man, 
and lives and talks as men do. If in the first revelation 
dignity was added to man as being made a companion 
and participant with God, in the second that dignity 
becomes exaltation when God is incorporated in man. 
In the first revelation the manifestations of God were 
in strong orders, portentous signs, sudden inflictions, 
rapid vengeances, direful presages, and utter destruc- 
tions; in the second the manifestations are healings, 
invitations, admonitions, messages of love, tenderness, 
sympathy, charity. In the first revelation God secured 
necessary ends by yielding to the customs and tenden- 
cies of the age, or by measures of incongruous tyranny ; 
in the second Christ displays an unapproachable 
standard of morality and conduct and temper, in- 
flexibly commands its recognition, alienates and 
scandalizes his age and contemporaries by fortitude, 
fearlessness, and separation. In the first revelation 
sacrifices were numerous, rude, barbarous, and 
figurative; in the second there is one, and it is re- 
splendent and effectual. 

Now, if need is seen in the first revelation, desire 
shines in the second — desire in men's hearts for the 
best and deepest and truest religious comforts and 
realities. It formed the justification and conditioning 
temper of the times which received the revelation and 

84 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

extricated it. And the strength and practical efficiency 
of that desire are measured when we examine the sta- 
tistics of Christianity. Jewish monotheism was with 
difficulty preserved within the narrow boundaries of 
its first estate. "The history of Mosaism is one of 
utter failure. It never took firm hold of the Jew till 
it was resolved into a complicated network of cere- 
monial. The revelation made by Moses met with 
small sympathy from the people in his own lifetime, 
and they only acquiesced in it during the life of Joshua 
and the elders who had traveled in the wilderness. 
The period of the judges is one of relapse into pagan- 
ism. David revived Mosaism, but it was too insipid 
for Solomon, who fell into idolatry; and the kings, 
with few exceptions, were indifferent or adverse to 
the law. The temper of the kings reflected that of 
the people, and, with a certain amount of outward 
conformity, there was deep-seated and thorough 
apostasy/' 1 

But when we turn to Christianity to determine its 
diffusive qualities we are astonished to see it spread 
with the swiftness of light over Europe. We see it in 
a few centuries invading barbaric fastnesses, over- 
turning indigenous cults which had been long estab- 
lished, and engendering along its course foci of zeal 
and proselyting eagerness which again originated new 
waves of missionary enterprise. We do not care to 
overestimate this. Force and threats, deceit and cun- 
ning played some part in the dissemination of Chris- 

1 Origin and Development of Religious Belief, S. Baring -Gould, vol. i, p. 228. 

85 



Prolegomena 

tianity, and all the elements of the new religion were 
not always Christian or admirable. But estimate the 
organized opposition it overcame, in state and society 
and in the individual, and it cannot fail to appear that 
it preeminently responded to the desire of men. And 
this response seems in a measure secured through the 
flexibility with which Christianity lends itself to per- 
version. Men found in it what they wished to find, 
and assimilated its absoluteness of dogma and its pre- 
ternatural notes of authority with their own vagaries 
and their own passions. To those who descry an 
ulterior object in history, and who think, 

"through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns," 

this plasticity of Christianity in immature and primi- 
tive ages may appear providential, and itself a demon- 
stration of Christianity's ineffable claim to be man's 
constant companion; for while it is disfigured by his 
vices or his weaknesses it perpetually appeals to his 
best sentiments and increasingly adds the weight of 
its influence to his highest aims. The providential 
aspect of this extreme adaptability is alluded to by 
Milman in these words: "The union of Christianity 
with monarchism, with sacerdotal domination, with 
the military spirit, with the spiritual autocracy of the 
papacy, with the advancement at one time, at another 
with the repression, of the human mind, had each 
their darker and brighter side, and were in succession 
(however they departed from the primal and ideal per- 

86 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

fection of Christianity) to a certain extent beneficial, 
because apparently almost necessary to the social and 
intellectual development of mankind at each particular 
juncture. So, for instance, military Christianity, 
which grew out of the inevitable incorporation of the 
force and energy of the barbarian conquerors with the 
sentiments and feelings of that age, and which finally 
produced chivalry, was in fact the substitution of in- 
humanity for Christian gentleness, of the love of glory 
for the love of peace. Yet was this indispensable to 
the preservation of Christianity in its contest with its 
new Eastern antagonist. Unwarlike Christianity 
would have been trampled under foot, and have been 
in danger of total extermination by triumphant 
Mohammedanism." 1 The first revelation was one of 
necessity, the second one of desire, and we are per- 
mitted to speculate upon the antecedents and the dis- 
tinctive marks of another and coming revelation, for, 
to use the words of Dr. Kedney, we may "claim not 
only the possibility but the probability of a still further 
divine revelation hereafter, as a superaddition to the 
already progressive series of divine interferences, or 
as a new phase of the development of the universe," 2 
and we may with greater certainty expect it because 
the credibility of the last is conditioned upon its 
actuality. That third revelation, which we believe will 
be final, so far as our present state is concerned, and 
which by believers is called "the judgment," we are 



1 History of Christianity, H. H. Milman, book iv, chap. v. 

2 Christian Doctrine Harmonized, J. S. Kedney, vol. i, p. 6. 



87 



Prolegomena 

entitled to regard as associated with a physical climax 
in the physical history of the world which itself will 
precipitate upon human society a strange deluge of 
terrors whereby its own cohesion will be destroyed in 
strict parallelism to a course of terrestial change, 
mutation, and collapse. The evidence in the gospels 
for such a view is considerable, and though the pas- 
sages bearing on this subject suffer from a curious 
confusion with predictions of the troublous times at- 
tending the dissemination of the gospel itself in the 
first centuries of our era, yet the significance of 
allusions to cosmic disorder is unmistakable as a pre- 
lude to an Apocalypse of momentous consequence, 
whose moral aspect assumes supreme finality, coinci- 
dent with a state of nature that no longer admits of 
life. We read: "Immediately after the tribulation of 
those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon 
shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from 
heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be 
shaken" (Matt. 24. 29). "But in those days, after 
that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the 
moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven 
shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be 
shaken" (Mark 13. 24, 25). "And there shall be signs 
in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; and upon 
the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea 
and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for 
fear, and for looking after those things which are 
coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall 
be shaken" (Luke 21. 25, 26). 

88 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

The different speculations that have been hazarded 
in reference to a final catastrophe which would ter- 
minate the order of things as we know them on our 
own sphere — for any such climax might be only a 
minute event in the enormous extent of cosmic facts 
and history — can be separated into two groups, as 
they arise from the terrestrial or the astronomical 
sciences. From the first we are taught how a cessation 
of life may be brought about by changes and processes 
already discernible upon the earth's surface; from the 
second we learn what perturbations may ensue in our 
solar system, and which are predicable themselves from 
known tendencies and laws. 

But whether we anticipate a period of increasing 
cold with Spencer, by which the human tribe will be 
forced into equatorial zones, and a vast desertion of 
its present residence follow the complete usurpation of 
the polar and temperate regions by a hemispherical 
ice cap; whether with De Candolle we conceive of a 
slow submergence of the land surfaces and the gradual 
retreat of populations before the invading waters of 
the ocean, by which movement internecine struggles 
will arise, a combat for room take place, and amid 
widespread conflict and anxiety civilization dwindle 
and degenerate; whether leaving the secular changes 
of our own earth we contemplate the slow refrigera- 
tion of the sun extending over ten millions of years, 
or, upon the evidence of Encke's comet as to a resisting 
medium in space, speculate as to its tenuous veil 
eventually bringing our bowling earth to a slower rate 

8 9 



Prolegomena 

of motion and at last hurling us gasping into the sun 
itself — whatever dream of scientific thought we light 
upon, all systems present us with a process of almost 
infinite duration by which the exterminating forces are 
made to act very moderately and the diminishing curve 
of life declines to its extinction by inappreciable and 
finitely inconsequent arcs. But the language of reve- 
lation, even if in this question we permit it the most 
generalized interpretation, points to an almost sudden 
physical climax. And the words and context curiously 
suggest a sort of sympathy between the derangement 
of the solar system and the moral and social tumult 
that precedes it. It would require a bold, or perhaps, 
more correctly, an ignorantly bold, mind to see any 
relation of cause and effect between the phenomena of 
nature and the aspects of human life, to find in 
the former, 

"That heaven hath infused them with these spirits 
To make them instruments of fear, and warning, 
Unto some monstrous state." 

But if an hypothesis could be framed which would 
show that in the course of centuries a physical change 
on the earth's surface, involving disturbances and dis- 
locations, which might themselves be appositely con- 
nected with periods of social unrest or mental rage 
among men, would be the result of certain changes in 
the earth's celestial relations ; further, that the progress- 
ive disorder on the earth's surface, bringing about, 
through mere physical complications, more and more 
serious strains in national existence, rose to a climax 

90 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

in direct union with the course of astronomical events, 
which themselves involved the permanence of our 
planetary system, then we would present to the imagi- 
nation a state of things measurably answering the 
requirements of revelation, so far as the meaning of 
revelation in this question is discernible. 

If an hypothesis is permissible, we would suggest 
that such a terrestrial and celestial simultaneity of 
catastrophism might be expected were the solar 
system, now moving toward the star A in the con- 
stellation of Hercules, to enter a region of dense 
meteoric matter. The repeated impacts in a stream 
of cosmic material would heat up the earth, arrest 
its rotation, and diminish its orbital velocity. 1 The 
consequences of such a series of events would be ter- 
rific, and the last scenes of our earth's life would then 
be enacted. As the tangential motion of rotation is 
the greatest at the equator, the heating of the earth's 
crust would be most effective at that zone, and an 
expansion of the rigid or solidified strata would bring 
about earthquakes and dislocations, while a train of 
meteorological phenomena of strange awfulness and 
colossal violence would succeed. Electrical storms of 
amazing vigor might be expected, increased evapora- 
tion of water would produce a great extent of cloud, 
and constant precipitation in the overcharged atmos- 

1 There is some reason for thinking that the earth is meeting more meteorites 
in this present period than it has in former ages, as the evidence of fossil mete- 
orites or entombed masses of extra-terrestrial irons and aerolites is of the scan- 
tiest kind, while the possible results of any very important collision with these 
celestial wanderers is indicated by the surmise of Dr. Croll, that "in such a case 
as Nova Cygni the outburst was due to the collision of a star with a swarm of 
meteorites." 

91 



Prolegomena 

phere flood the earth with recurrent deluges. The 
skies would assume an unearthly and sinister magnifi- 
cence, dark with condensed fields of moisture and 
penetrated by currents of blazing aerolites, while the 
lengthened nights and days, made hideous by per- 
petual detonations from falling bodies, would derange 
the calculations of time, and in conjunction with the 
increased year intensify the seasons. Winter and 
summer would alike destroy life, and chase the human 
herds in fright and suffering from pole to equinox and 
back again. The perplexed moon would fall toward 
the earth in lessening and quickened revolutions, the 
earth revert with awful oscillations to the solar mael- 
strom, and beyond to the last limits of our system the 
same monstrous tragedy of planetary suicide fill space 
with anguish and desolation. 

Human society would become stark mad with terror, 
the demons of disease would leap out upon the earth, 
lamentations would be forgotten in carnage, and car- 
nage stifled in death. Truly to such a time the lan- 
guage of Scripture would vividly apply : "For in those 
days shall be affliction, such as was not from the be- 
ginning of the creation which God created unto this 
time, neither shall be. And except that the Lord had 
shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but 
for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath 
shortened the days" (Mark 13. 19, 20). 

If the first revelation was from a human standpoint 
one of necessity, the second one of desire, then from 
the same point of view the last will be one of physical 

92 



The Ordinates of Revelation 

salvation, an actual rescue to perishing nations disap- 
pearing in the gulf of physical ruin. The suggestive 
paradox will be contemplated of the finale of natural 
powers ushering in the sublime manifestations of the 
supernatural world; the unseen universe flashing — "as 
the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even 
unto the west" — into sight, revealed by the slipping 
away and fall of the mask of things, seen, temporal, 
and delusive. 

What may then ensue may never be known to the 
writer of this paragraph, nor to many who now read 
it, but the fine language of Professor Kedney seems 
to create its nascent possibilities before the mind and 
surround them with an atmosphere of rational delight : 
"We have given, in a scattered way, all the elements 
which must constitute the heavenly state that can be 
reached by our pure thinking. These may be summed 
up as exhibiting the normal, the ideal relations of 
concrete existence, and are: First, individual ethical 
perfection, on which all depends. This has for its 
motive-spring religion, the personal bond, the re- 
sponsive and spontaneous love of the individual soul 
to the divine love, which can have the form of sacrifice 
no more. Second, the mirroring in the interrelations 
of the human commonwealth, the harmony of the im- 
manent relations of the Godhead, uniting thus the 
members of the same into one organism, of which 
Christ will be the unifying center. Third, physical 
glorification, or the domination over nature, over the 
material of the universe, now adapted in its recuper- 

93 



Prolegomena 

ated state to the activities, the desires, we may say to 
the caprices, of the purified and perfected souls, now 
to be trusted in sharing the divine potence and pres- 
ence, and sure never to misuse them — endowed even 
with creative powers able to bring forth endless com- 
binations and new beauty. Fourth, mental illumina- 
tion — the disappearance of all that is confusing and 
bewildering, and that can produce error, the possession 
of the true center of knowledge, whence everything in 
the scope of the mental vision is harmoniously related, 
yet which vision can be forever extended toward the 
forever-receding circumference — the discovery and 
enjoyment of the divine thoughts, the penetration of 
the secrets that now elude us, the wonders of the 
spatially little, as well as of the spatially great — the 
extension of the vision beyond the present bounds of 
knowledge into the manifold or numberless disclosures 
of the stellar universe. Fifth, the extension of the 
sphere of fellowship and love, in which the penetration 
into each new soul and discovery of its content will be 
satisfying from its loving perfection, and full of de- 
light from its uniqueness — in which sphere new ties 
can be formed, guided by special sympathies ; for there 
can be no monotony or repetition among the perfected 
souls, as there is none among the souls undergoing 
purification.' ,1 

1 Christian Doctrine Harmonized, J. S. Kedney, vol. ii, p. 335. 

94 



CHAPTER I 
The Articles of Intention 

I. Intention is the attitude of the mind prompted by 
desire } as a motive derived from feeling, guided by 
thought, and directed by will, toward an act, state, 
general or specific condition, and, in the sense of aim 
or purpose, refers to the future. 

Archbishop Trench has said that "God has im- 
pressed such a seal of truth upon language that men 
are continually uttering deeper things than they 
know," and we have for a long time become accus- 
tomed to examine the literal basement of a word's 
meaning that we may grasp its philosophic implica- 
tions when it reaches the metaphysical stage of use. 
Intention is literally a straining or stretching toward, 
from the Latin in and tendo, and as in Greek from 
retvcj, and it has thus primarily, in the fullest scope 
of its application, the significance of earnest effort 
toward an object, and with this idea Locke has defined 
intention as a state "when the mind, with great 
earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, 
considers it on every side, and will not be called off by 
the ordinary solicitation of other ideas." Webster 
thus defines it in its primary meaning as "A stretching 
or bending of the mind toward an object; closeness of 
application ; fixedness of attention ; earnestness." This 

95 



The World as Intention 

initial ardor of mental effort declines into the sec- 
ondary but quite as legitimate ideas of "Design, pur- 
pose, object, aim," though in all of these there seems 
properly associated a certain vehemence and fixedness 
of mind. Dr. Johnson gives as his first definition of 
intention, "Eagerness of desire; closeness of attention; 
deep thought; vehemence or ardor of mind;" and as 
his second, "Design ; purpose." Worcester gives first, 
"Closeness of attention; deep ardor of mind; intense- 
ness; intensity;" second, "That which is intended; 
the object which one proposes; design; purpose; end; 
aim;" third, "The state of being intense; intensity." 
Professor C. J. Smith (Synonyms Discriminated) 
under "Attention and Intent" says : "These words, 
formed from the Latin tendere, to stretch, are the one 
passive, or indication of a state, the other active. I am 
attentive when my ear or my mind is in an attitude of 
listening, and I am ready for any impression that may 
be made upon either. I am intent when I am in an 
attitude of being stretched forward, toward a thing in 
eagerness, premeditation, and desire. I am attentive 
to receive. I am intent upon doing. He who is atten- 
tive allows an object to be proposed to him by another. 
He who is intent has proposed one to himself. He who 
is not attentive is heedless. He who is not intent is in- 
different and inactive. I am attentive to the voice of 
persons, to the claims of duty. I am intent on a 
certain work or design, on reaching a certain point, on 
gaining a proposed end." 

Without quoting further it is evident that intention 

9 6 



The Articles of Intention 

at first was applied to a state of mental earnestness, 
vivacity, and preoccupation. Then, as a logical con- 
sequence of such a state, an active design would 
naturally arise or grow out of it, and thus it was in 
the second place applied to an aim or purpose, and 
there was carried into this aim or purpose a reflection 
of that ardor and excitement which suffused the pre- 
liminary and adventive state, so that intention retained 
its concentrated and persistent qualities. 

But if we are to accept the dictum that words "con- 
vey mental treasures" in themselves, we also are en- 
titled to believe that the successive and varying 
applications of a word develop new phases of its latent 
mental force and are to be inspected as throwing light 
upon its scope and are evidence of an historical de- 
velopment of its capabilities of expression. 

Intention has come to be used in less restrictive 
forms until the idea of fixedness, ardor, earnestness, 
has almost disappeared, and it remains to express 
a feeble inclination of the mind toward an object, 
as contrasted with "straining" and "stretching." 
M. Littre in his dictionary of the French language has 
paid considerable attention to these shades of meaning. 
He gives intention the meaning of reciprocal accord : 
"Nous sommes d'intention avec vous dans tout ce que 
vous faites." He explains it as a theological term 
where it implies a simple and formal aim in a celebrant 
to mean certain things : "Intention actuelle ou intention 
exterieure, celle qui accompagne Taction. L'intention 
exterieure suffit pour la validite des sacrements;" 

97 



The World as Intention 

again, as a term of devotion, implying a desire to ex- 
emplify a certain proper state of mind: "diriger ou 
dresser son intention, rapporter ses actions, ses vues 
a une fin determined et ordinairement a une bonne fin." 
In casuistry it indicates the subtlety of an effort to 
escape blame for an overt offense in words or deed by 
the plea of a concealed or latent intention to commit 
none. In music intention is used in a sense similar to 
motif, and designates the primary melodic notion upon 
which the piece hangs. In scholasticism the first in- 
tention is the "action de l'esprit qui se porte directe- 
ment sur l'objet et l'apprehende intuitivement ;" sec- 
ond intention is "celle de l'esprit qui, reflechissant sur 
la connaissance premiere, s'enforme un notion moins 
immediate ou plutot derivee. Ainsi homme est un 
terme de premiere intention; et ce qui convient a 
l'homme comme d'etre espece, d'etre au nominatif 
c'est de seconde intention. " 

Thus intention is graded in force and in incisiveness 
from the strength of a fixed, ardent, steadfast gaze or 
design to the simple inclination of the mind toward 
an object when we speak or think of it. But all these 
lessened or reduced forms or degrees of intention still 
conform to the structural type. They are "attitudes 
of the mind prompted by desire, guided by thought, 
and directed by will," but they are weak in outline, 
deficient in force, fabulous and undeveloped in texture. 
They are ghosts of full intentions, they appear as 
shadows of full intentions, they may be the faded as- 
pects of past states of mind which possessed the 

9 8 



The Articles of Intention 

vivacity of real intention, or they may be emergent 
figures disclosed upon the table of the mind which will 
strengthen and deepen and become charged with 
energy and light and color. And the colloquial and 
technical uses of intention which express some of them 
are the reflections caught in language of these 
embryonic or decadent forms. 

II. Intention always represents a movement of the 
will, and depends absolutely upon the will's exercise 
for its existence. 

It is evident that intention must depend on the will, 
for it is our expression of the will. To talk longer 
about this would simply be running around a circle. 
Other elements impart differing qualities to different 
intentions and bring into it a less or greater amount of 
will-force, but upon will intention rests as the sole 
means by which it can come to the surface of physical 
or mental life. We may say a person represents an 
intention when there is no conscious reference to his 
particular states or acts, but in such a remark the 
reference is made to an hypothetical Creator whose 
intention that person seems to express. Intention 
whether regarded as a strained mind or a deliberate 
aim involves effort, and consequently the exercise of 
the will. Our attention may be caught without a con- 
scious disturbance of the will, the will may be asleep, 
but intention is a voluntary excitation, and advertises 
an erected will ; a will scarcely aroused, or a will ram- 
pant and inflamed, or a will advancing "like the tramp 
of armed men." 

99 



LofC. 



The World as Intention 

III. An intention derives its character or quality 
from the number and kind and relative intensity of the 
mental elements knit into it. Intention involving will 
almost entirely has regard to acts, and is executive; 
involving preeminently feeling, it has regard to satis- 
faction or enjoyment, and is emotional; involving con- 
spicuously thinking, it has regard to systems, connec- 
tions of thought, and mental establishment, ideas, 
education, or progress. 

At no time can an intention be deprived of any of 
the elements of mind, but intentions can arise which 
are very largely the result of a preponderating in- 
fluence of one only, and they can be so classified. An 
intention involving will alone gives birth to a physical 
act; in it feeling is not conspicuous, nor thinking. It 
may come about as a necessity before either feeling or 
thinking has been excited or interrogated, or it may 
be a lapsed form of what has been a full intention with 
feeling and thinking more developed. It characterizes 
simple and often sudden muscular movements, and is 
preeminently an exhibition of the naked will motor — 
that is, the will in the phase it first assumes, namely, 
control of muscular motions; for, as Dr. Bain has 
shown, the education of the will is primarily secured 
by its acquired use of the numerous muscles of our 
body, and their innumerable combinations to attain 
ends that are pleasing or to avert conditions that are 
painful. "It is in movement that clear purpose and 
intention first display themselves" (Sully). To illus- 
trate this kind of intention : In running a man unex- 

ioo 



The Articles of Intention 

pectedly encounters fences or ditches or other sur- 
mountable obstacles and he leaps over them. They 
are seen, measured, and overpassed. The intention 
has been spontaneously evoked to jump them, it has 
scarcely been thought of, it bears in it the very 
smallest percentage of feeling, and can be best de- 
scribed as an act of the will solely. As Mr. Sully says : 
"What we commonly mean by a manifestation of will 
is some outward action or movement. Will is thus 
seen to stand in close relation to the motor side of the 
nervous system. As we popularly phrase it, the active 
organs (limbs, voice, etc.) are the instruments of 
the will." 1 

Now, all muscular actions which are voluntary are 
largely intentions of the will, and at first when difficult, 
as the act of walking in a child, are accompanied with 
perhaps considerable feeling or thinking, and yet, as 
in the case of children, cannot be very much colored 
by either. They are persisted in until the elements of 
feeling and thinking become almost eliminated, and 
will itself as a conscious exertion very much depressed. 
They are then automatic. Thus they illustrate in this 
class of intentions (intentions of the will) that weak 
phase which our review of the definitions of intention 
brought before us. For instance, it is my intention 
to walk to the boat. It is difficult to descry in this 
"attitude of my mind" much feeling or thinking, and 
there is certainly no "stretching or straining." My 
feet move obediently to my will, which itself is scarcely 

1 Outlines of Psychology, J. Sully, p. 572. 
IOI 



The World as Intention 

active, since no resistance requires its strong assertion, 
and I reach the boat in the habitual familiar way, and 
so have illustrated an intention of the will, when that 
function of my mind was only relatively awakened 
and none of my mental trains of thought or moods of 
feeling were even momentarily disturbed or obscured. 
Yet there was intention here, for "voluntary action 
always includes an element of knowing and of feeling," 
but any specific feeling or thought connected with my 
reaching the boat had faded into a tenuous accom- 
paniment of an almost spontaneous action. It is, how- 
ever, moribund intention expiring beneath the grow- 
ing accretions of habit. 

When feeling suffuses intention our will responds 
to the imperious demands of desire, and the intention 
vanishes as the desire is gratified. This is a higher 
grade of intention; it embraces more complex ex- 
amples, and it employs loftier attributes of the mind. 
Imagination enters into the tissue of motives springing 
from feeling, stimulating and accelerating their vehe- 
mence, and memory plays into the hands of desire by 
recalling scenes of pleasure, sensations of delight, and 
profitable actions. This class of intentions are not so 
quickly executed; their duration is considerable, and 
they are spread over a longer and wider area of events 
and deeds, they undergo changes of intensity, they 
may become compound and build into themselves a 
number of simple aims which are steps in the complete 
plan of realization. Thought is engaged extensively 
in their execution, will acts throughout with a mighty 

102 



The Articles of Intention 

sway, under the nervous excitement of desire, ex- 
ploding now in actions, now holding the mind fixed 
with an absorbed gaze upon its object. But it is feel- 
ing, the gratification of emotions, which dominates 
and signalizes this class of intentions, giving them a 
wide psychological range, admixing in their currents 
the notes of love, of hate, of fear. Feeling carries 
them to dramatic denouements, enlivens them with 
expressive gesture and movements, and throws them 
forward into waves of accumulating impetus and size. 
Such intentions appear sometimes distended with the 
amplitude of vague and generous natures and are 
without drastic energy, compassing too much in the 
diversity of many strains of feeling, and again they 
are restricted in scope, and, confined within narrow 
boundaries, move on with speed and power, with 
delight and invigorating certainty. For, as Sir W. 
Hamilton says, "The act of the conative (desiring) 
faculty is exerted by relation to a certain law of con- 
sciousness, or knowledge, or intelligence. This law, 
which we call the law of limitation, is, that the inten- 
sion of our knowledge is in the inverse ratio of its 
extension — in other words, that the fewer objects we 
consider at once, the clearer and more distinct will be 
our knowledge of them." 1 

These intentions of feeling illustrate character, and 
derive specific elements of interest as they assume 
varied investitures of manner and method according 
to individual characteristics. These intentions illus- 

1 Lectures on Metaphysics, lecture xiv. 
IO3 



The World as Intention 

trate the varying degrees of strength which intention 
may have as they arise in deep or superficial feeling, 
strong or weak emotional natures, and are relatively 
extended or limited in their objects. As a capital and 
attractive illustration of this class of intentions, take 
the intention of a mother to advance and nurture and 
establish her children. It springs from the feeling of 
love, but it embraces a group of related and derivative 
emotions, as pride, admiration, devotion to duty, love 
of goodness, hope, exultation, sympathy, emulation; 
it extends over a lifetime, constantly enlivening the 
will with new desire, desire that attains renewed force 
with each stage forward of realization, stirring the 
mind and exacting its invention, its prudence, its re- 
sources. Through disappointment, through privations 
and sickness and reproaches and rebuff, it pursues its 
undeviating course, deepening the channels of inward 
graciousness and sweetness and unselfish effort, often 
in exact equivalence to the outward furrows and lines 
of age which have written on the face and body the 
record of struggle and self-sacrifice. It passes through 
contrasted phases, it is now intense, now debilitated 
or relaxed, it includes an innumerable host of lesser 
intentions, and its desire blends along its course the 
ardor of expectation and the impulses of recollection. 

When thinking enters very strongly into intention 
we are apt to find intention assuming those primary 
forms which are referred to in the original definitions 
of intention as "having the mind strained or closely 
fixed on a subject," representing intellectual direction 

104 



The Articles of Intention 

before acts have been conceived or feeling excited. 
Feeling is certainly present, for though "nice intel- 
lectual work, such as discovering unobtrusive dif- 
ferences or similarities among objects, or following 
out an intricate chain of reasoning, is impossible ex- 
cept in a comparatively calm state of mind," 1 yet "all 
intellectual activity, since it implies interest, depends 
on the presence of a certain moderate degree of feel- 
ing." 1 And willing is obviously drawn upon very 
markedly as anyone can attest by his examination of 
his consciousness when engaged in study, in the ac- 
complishment of a severe mental task, or the prepara- 
tion of a scheme of action whose parts and their 
effects must be first judiciously adjusted and deter- 
mined. Intentions of thinking are perhaps the least 
common and the most profound. They develop the 
intellectual scope of a man, they apply his learning 
and experience, and absorb his nervous force. They 
enlarge and become complex as men grow in years, 
and they are then attended with less effort; the mind 
turns its concentrated gaze with more and more readi- 
ness upon mental questions, and we frame broader and 
deeper intellectual projects and systems. Practice 
accustoms the mind to intention, and it renders our 
thinking so spontaneous and fervid that willing 
dwindles more and more as a conscious strain and our 
mind fastens on a theme with ease and tenacity. 

The intention in grasping a mathematical argument, 
retaining a circle or line of events, informing oneself 

1 Outlines of Psychology, J. Stilly. 
105 



The World as Intention 

with a language, achieving an end by adequate 
methods, projecting an enterprise or elaborating a 
philosophy, are intentions of thinking, and in them, of 
course, willing and feeling are inextricably and differ- 
ently involved. But feeling is more conspicuous in 
the gratification of our simple emotions, and willing 
appears more disconnectedly when we successfully 
finish a muscular feat. 

IV. An intention puts on besides these very general 
aspects or expressions y kinds or classes, an innumerable 
host of lesser shades of difference which are derived 
from the personal attributes of the individual. 

Such differences are immediately understood, and 
are matters of daily exemplification. Great contrasts 
in ability and great differences of appetence in different 
individuals bring about an endless sea of graded and 
contrasted intentions. Dr. McCosh has wisely delin- 
eated the fluctuating aspects of men's temperaments. 
He says : "Some of these, such as the love of happiness 
and the reverse, operate in the hearts of all men; 
others, such as the love of polite society, and refine- 
ment, are confined to a few. There are persons who 
are incapable of being moved by ends which power- 
fully attract others; thus their worldly substance so 
engrosses some that they cannot understand how any- 
one should set a high value on knowledge ; while with 
others the thirst for learning overpowers the love of 
gold and every other sordid disposition. Some in- 
clinations seem to be personal and peculiar to the 
individual, as you see in that youth a tendency to 

1 06 



The Articles of Intention 

solitary musing not known among any of his kindred. 
Others are hereditary and run in families, it may be 
penuriousness, or vanity, or the love of excitement or 
of strong drinks ; or are characteristic of races, as the 
love of war or of conquest. Some are strong in youth 
and become weaker in old age, as the appetites and 
the amorous affections with all their concomitants, 
and very often also the love of gayety and small am- 
bitions. Some are apt to be strong in the female char- 
acter, such as the love of dress, and of admiration, of 
sympathy with joy and sorrow; others are, usually, 
stronger in the male sex, as pride, courage, and the 
love of adventure and speculation. Some of the 
motives are fixed, like a stationary engine drawing up 
freighted carriages day and night, such as the love of 
power, and ambition generally; others, as the love of 
excitement and amusements, move on with circum- 
stances, like the locomotive advancing with its 
accompanying train." 1 

V. Apart from the object of an intention, its ease of 
accomplishment, when intention is an aim or design, 
depends on the peculiarities of the subject willing, on 
the extent of the material or agents, outside of the 
subject, which must be employed, and on the sort and 
extent of opposing intentions. 

How real the influence of the peculiarities of a per- 
son is upon the execution of a plan is notably illus- 
trated in the play of Hamlet. Here an intention con- 
ceived under circumstances of mysterious wonderful- 

1 Psychology, The Motive Powers, J. McCosh, p. 27. 
107 



The World as Intention 

ness and abetted by the deep-laid springs of filial 
affection slips with incontinent restlessness from its 
dangerous ends because it arises in a singular nature, 
in a mind weakened with reverie and abashed before 
the specters of its own doubts. Again, it is "the weak- 
ness of volition, the instability of purpose, the contem- 
plative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always 
shrinking from action, and always occupied in 'think- 
ing too precisely on the event/ united to immense in- 
tellectual power," 1 that make to Hamlet intentions of 
a certain kind difficult, and intentions more confined 
to the regions of thought easy. 

Conversely, Lady Macbeth's "amazing power of 
intellect, her inexorable determination of purpose, her 
superhuman strength of nerve/' 2 cause her action to 
be instantaneously effective; her intention is an over- 
mastering and trenchant embodiment of every faculty, 
and will and feeling and thought alike mingle in its 
twisted and rigid strands. Lady Macbeth "having pro- 
posed an object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal 
glory, fixes her eye steadily upon it, soars far above 
all womanish feelings and scruples to attain it, and 
swoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity 
of a vulture." 

The range of taste, the cultivation of faculties, the 
preponderating complexion or temperament, even the 
physiological susceptibilities and instincts, will modify 
and distinguish intention in different persons. 



1 Characteristics of Women, Ophelia, Mrs. Jameson. 

2 Ibid., Lady Macbeth. 

1 08 



The Articles of Intention 

Outside of the subject, the character of the material 
to be manipulated, or the agents to be employed, and 
the opposition to be overcome are obvious considera- 
tions in measuring the ease or hardness of completing 
an intention. No more extraordinary and stupendous 
example of force of intention against every imaginable 
obstacle could be cited than the march of Stanley to 
the relief of Emin Pasha through impenetrable wilds, 
encompassed by hostile races, exposed to unmitigated 
sufferings, and stimulated by no hopes of exorbitant 
rewards or the imaginative pictures of fabulous coun- 
tries such as lured the Spanish adventurers in their 
grand exploits. 

The education of the will in self-control, the elabora- 
tion of conduct, the slow growth of habitual suppres- 
sion of unnecessary or injurious or wrong emotions, 
and the training and sharpening of mental appercep- 
tions all relate to the perfectionment of intention, 
Intention contains elements belonging to all of these 
departments of the mind, and, smoothly and evenly 
developed, they interact and contribute stability, clear- 
ness, and moral persistency to our specific intentions. 
This has been a fruitful theme for both psychological 
debate and instruction. It would be impertinent to 
dwell on that here, but the "ease of accomplishment" 
of an intention outside of the subject's original traits 
will be largely a function not only of the circumstances 
involved, but of the acquired powers of mind gained 
by exercise, experience, and study. 

The exterior impediments to the execution of an 
109 



The World as Intention 

intention are those which may be referred to the inertia 
and number of obstacles before us, or the inadequacy 
of the instrumentalities used to accomplish it, and 
those which arise from the interposition of opposing 
intentions, the encounter with another mind or minds 
directed athwart or against the movement of our own. 
The former may be called the circumstantial resistance 
to our intentions, the latter the volitional resistance. 
The distinction between these and some distinguishing 
test for their detection is important. The first are 
embraced in the general difficulties of our situation 
when about to start an intention, as unhandiness of 
position, illustrated in an intention to win a race when 
we are handicapped; dullness or awkwardness of 
agents, illustrated in an intention to construct a plot 
or scheme when no appreciation or intelligence is 
available in our assistants; massiveness or extent of 
work required, as intention to clear a region covered 
by a wilderness; accidents, as sickness, detention, in- 
firmity, etc. ; loss or deficiency of means, as bankruptcy, 
wreck, desertion, robbery; distracting influences, as 
music when we study or the calls of attractive pleas- 
ures. The second are expressed in the designs of a 
mind whose first intention is to overthrow ours, to 
defeat us, humiliate and pervert our plans. It is my 
intention to knock a man down; it is his that I shall 
not. Whatever skill, experience, or adventitious aid 
either of us can employ are enlisted, and where these 
circumstantial accessories are equal the stronger inten- 
tion will probably succeed, barring accidents, that 

no 



The Articles of Intention 

strength of intention being an individual incom- 
municable characteristic. In more important en- 
counters it is in the form of contest, rivalry, or in 
downright and persistent antagonism, and this re- 
sistance is, of course, conditioned in its amount and 
intensity upon the advantages and the concentration of 
our opponent. 

Now, it is manifest that frequently the effect of 
circumstantial resistance will appear quite the same 
as volitional, and vice versa. The intention of one 
body of soldiers behind a wall to repel the attacks of 
a second body who are struggling to scale it, to the 
invaders, is equivalent to a higher, stronger, and more 
difficult obstruction. And a reinforcement of the 
scaling line would, to the defenders, be tantamount to 
a lowering and weakening of the wall. 

A person's intention to master a subject when few 
opportunities, defective books, and many conflicting 
claims interfere with his progress may be made refer- 
able to circumstantial or volitional resistances. These 
interferences may be the natural consequences of his 
position, or they may be the artifically created barriers 
thrown in his path by malignity or rancor. It is a 
matter of cardinal interest in the development of the 
doctrine of intention to find out how and how far we 
can separate resistance arising from circumstances or 
from volition. 

It is not simple for us in our own lives or in those of 
our friends to tell when intentions are resisted by 
circumstances and when by other persons. It is less 

in 



The World as Intention 

simple, without information, to say how far in the lives 
of those we see, but do not know about, one or the 
other classes of resistance is active. And in the broad 
and profound field of observation we enter upon in 
the next chapter of this inquiry it is, we are led to 
believe, a subject of arduous debate whether intention, 
flowing from a supreme Mind, has suffered at least 
temporary defeat because of the intractableness of the 
materials it manipulates (circumstance) or because it 
is resisted by another mind (volition) which contra- 
venes and disputes it. 

If we can frame a rule which will enable us, even 
partially, to tell when circumstantial or volitional re- 
sistance is in play we shall have made, in this discus- 
sion, a not inconsiderable advance. We think there 
are two related methods for this determination, one 
the metric or method of calculation, the other the 
method of counter intention. The metric rule is this : 
Estimate the entire force or amount of resistance, 
estimate the force or amount of circumstantial re- 
sistance as nearly as is possible, then any difference 
between the first and second calculations is referred to 
volitional resistance; that is, the excess in the sum of 
all resistances over the sum of strictly circumstantial 
resistance is volitional resistance. The method of 
counter intention is this : Observe whether resistances 
to an intention cease upon the abandonment of the 
intention, or whether an action is set up which con- 
tinues until a result is brought about which is the 
opposite of the intention. If it is, it must be attributed 

112 



The Articles of Intention 

to the active impulse of volitional resistance. It will 
be necessary to dwell upon this. 

As an illustration of the application of both rules, 
simple and apposite, take the event of a man pushing 
back a very heavy door which requires for its propul- 
sion his entire strength ; the door is entirely free from 
any disarrangement or mechanical imperfection and 
yet it does not move; the conclusion is inevitable that 
it is being pushed against from the opposite side. 
This is metric; the sum of all resistance is the inertia 
of the door plus an unknown extra resistance; the 
inertia of the door, as circumstantial resistance, being 
deducted, leaves the unknown extra resistance to be 
accounted for as volitional resistance. But the next 
phase of this incident illustrates the use of the method 
of counter intention; the man relinquishes his under- 
taking, and the door, which before remained motionless 
even upon the expenditure of his greatest strength, 
which ordinarily was quite adequate to move it, now 
swings forward in an opposite direction to the force 
he applied. Here we have volitional resistance re- 
vealed again, since the circumstantial resistance would 
have ceased to act upon the abandonment of the first 
intention and the door would have remained station- 
ary ; but as the door moves against the man instead of 
away from him a result is brought about which is the 
opposite of the first intention and must be ascribed to 
volitional resistance solely. Volitional resistance is 
equivalent to volitional impulse or push, or equivalent 
to a reverse intention. Volitional resistance can yet 

113 



The World as Intention 

conceal itself under the forms of circumstantial re- 
sistance so as to be undeterminable, from our objective 
secondhand point of view, or, being simply obstructive, 
it may disappear upon the vanishment of the intention 
it opposed. For example, in ascending a hill a series 
of difficulties may be met, as stones, ditches, fallen 
logs, all of which might be circumstantial, accidents 
inherent in the place, or they may be partly circum- 
stantial and volitional, being partly placed there with 
deliberation and a reverse intention, or they may be 
entirely volitional, having been created or attached to 
the place by design. And when the intention to ascend 
the hill is abandoned there is no further demonstration 
that betrays an opposing volitional agency. A close 
inspection is required as to the natural or artificial 
character of the obstructions, and some general knowl- 
edge as to the antecedent state of the ground; and 
while this may be easily attainable and entirely decisive 
in an instance of this sort, involving natural con- 
tingencies, it is more delicate and difficult to separate 
these two classes of resistances in cases of moral or 
intellectual movements, where both resistances are 
similarly confounded. To tell how far, in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge or the restraint of a propensity, 
circumstantial or volitional resistances are met, where 
the latter do not openly appear, as the expressed an- 
tagonism of a person, but are veiled under surrepti- 
tiously interposed influences and impediments, is a 
problem of indefinite and futile duration. The two 
rules indicated are in themselves generally adequate to 

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The Articles of Intention 

give us the determinations we are after, but in many 
cases their use is prevented or impaired by the poverty 
of our information as to what circumstantial resist- 
ances, as such, really exist, and as to the extent or 
nature of a volitional resistance, whether it intends to 
arrest an intention and is therefore passive simply, or 
whether it intends to set up an action which will go 
further and bring about a condition of things contra- 
dictory to the state of things contemplated in the first 
intention ; whether it will cancel a -f- and make it a 
only, or create a — quantity. In the case just cited, 
of ascending the hill, the volitional resistance would 
be passive if it stopped at defeating an intention to 
ascend, but active if it pursued the persons intending 
to ascend and destroyed them. What results the ap- 
plication of these rules will bring us will be seen later. 
Finally, in this section the subject of effort or 
endeavor is suggested as the consequence of resistance, 
for "the full consciousness of striving arises only when 
the action to which the desire impels is difficult, when 
there is some hindrance or obstruction present" 
(Sully). Effort is proportioned to the amount of 
resistance, and is conditioned upon the strength of 
intention and the functional excellence of the mind. 
When there is little or no resistance, when intention is 
ardent and vigorous, and the powers of the mind are 
strong and active, effort is realized, but is reduced to 
the conscious movements of the body and of the mind 
as a change from rest, and then forms an exhilarating 
accompaniment to the progress and success of both. 

115 



The World as Intention 

Effort is felt when resistance increases and the powers 
of the mind flag under its opposition ; then the will is 
compelled to exert its sway, retardation sets in, and 
the intention is more or less imperiled. Reflection 
under such circumstances is more and more involved; 
strengthening motives are recalled and increased, and 
the mental machinery works under a higher pressure. 
Intention matured under effort develops the will, and 
is the most efficient means of giving it training and 
precision. It adds to its powers over the mind and 
body, brings it more and more in sympathy with the 
intellectual processes of thought, and improves its 
sensibility to the impressions of feeling. Intentions 
completed with little effort are apt to lose the distinc- 
tive character of intention; they depreciate the force 
of the mind or give it an irritable spasmodic insistency 
which is soon shattered before obstacles and delays. 
Effort also arises in a reflex way from the intensity of 
intention, the mind stretching forward out of all re- 
lation with its qualifications and powers of achieve- 
ment; fatigue and twist are felt, and a precipitancy 
engendered which often throws its possessor prostrate. 
This occurs in temperaments emotionally overcharged 
but defective in thought and will. Generally speaking, 
however, effort always accompanies intention and is a 
true index of its reality and importance. As transla- 
tion in a train is secured by friction on the rails of 
the track, so progress in intention is made when, by 
effort continually expended, we obtain, so to speak, a 
grip upon events and control over ourselves. 

116 



The Articles of Intention 

"If," says Sir W. Hamilton, "we are vigorous 
enough to pursue our course in spite of obstacles, 
every step as we advance will be found easier; the 
mind becomes more animated and energetic; the dis- 
tractions gradually diminish; the attention is more 
exclusively concentrated upon its object; the kindred 
ideas flow with greater freedom and abundance, and 
afford an easier selection of what is suitable for illus- 
tration. At length our system of thought harmonizes 
with our pursuit. The whole man becomes, as it may 
be, a philosopher, an historian, a poet ; he lives only in 
the trains of thought relating to this character. He 
now energizes freely and consequently with pleasure; 
for pleasure is the reflex of unforced and unimpeded 
energy. All that is produced in this state of mind 
bears the stamp of excellence and perfection." 1 

VI. Intentions may be simple or compound, and 
one intention may open a path of indefinite duration 
every step of which can only be gained by a new act 
of will, which act may be diversely and infinitely 
varied with every repetition. 

To yield results lives must be ruled by intention, 
and while the lives of most men are a sequence or 
chain of separated intentions as new fields of occupa- 
tion are entered upon, old ones extended, as we dis- 
cover our aptitudes or recognize our needs, encourage 
our tastes or repress our vices, as we come into closer 
relations with society and yield to the pressure and 
influence of new attractions, new duties, new interests ; 

1 Lectures on Metaphysics, Sir W. Hamilton, vol. i. p. 256. 
117 



The World as Intention 

while usually there is no simple theory and plan pro- 
posed, rilled out, and rendered concrete in actual 
operations, projects, and ends, but we pursue a course 
of irrelevant and disjected haphazard motions which 
gain perhaps a phantom unity from the dominant in- 
tention to keep life in our bodies, and supply that life 
with the natural pleasures and supports life craves, 
and from the technical requirements of our occupation 
— while this is true of the majority, and cannot well 
be otherwise, there are men or minds who, carried 
along by a spontaneous and overflowing energy or 
else by the intellectual force of exact calculation, form 
great designs, signalize distant objects, and expand 
their efforts till they attain them. These are the 
artists, thinkers, inventors, students, business leaders, 
and commanders in all lines of action and industry. 
Some intention rules their lives, itself perhaps acci- 
dentally or even cautiously formed, to which their 
daily routine ministers, to which all other intentions 
are subordinate, and which embraces these lesser de- 
signs and is composed in them, as the circle is finally 
revealed in the polygon infinitely divided. To place 
the achievement of the intention far beyond the present 
time and to approach it over intervening years requires 
a higher order of mind than to pursue ends nearer at 
hand, more quickly enjoyed, and more easily repre- 
sented to our desire. Such an intention demands 
tenacity of conviction in our own powers or privileges, 
careful thought in our preparations, balanced judg- 
ment as to means and ways, the forecasting power of 

118 



The Articles of Intention 

imagination which refreshes our desire by pictures of 
fruition, and volition back of all, applied with an unde- 
viating pressure. In such intention the first steps are 
the hardest, the end is so dim or veiled, our resources 
are yet so incomplete, and the diversions which tend 
to disperse and deviate our efforts are so numerous; 
but as we gain consistency in our view, practice in our 
movements, and the sense of approach grows stronger, 
our delight in the pursuit consolidates our powers, 
ties them together, and produces an acceleration in 
our advance. This is seen in the acquirement of any 
accomplishment, as a language, music, etc., or in the 
establishment of knowledge, as professional skill. 

Such a large intention will hold together an indef- 
inite collection of subordinate intentions, which mark 
its successive steps, or are related to it as the various 
portions of an architecture are to the inclosing complete 
conception which the finished structure represents. 

Now, such extended intentions may be narrow or 
broad in their scope; that is, while always compre- 
hensive in a sense, they may be directed toward one 
or a multiplicity of objects. And this again must 
depend on the richness in capabilities, in sensibility 
and propelling will power of a mind — indeed, ma- 
terially upon the physical perfection of the man. For 
instance, it belongs to the order of intentions we are 
discussing for a person who is conscious of musical 
gifts to propose to himself musical celebrity, and this 
end may itself vary in dimensions from the thought of 
a virtuoso simply to the abundant range of acquisi- 

119 



The World as Intention 

tions embodied in a composer. Or a man may look 
for distinction in society, in the world of statesman- 
ship and action, and intend to win it, and his intention 
would be expanded or limited as he made the horizon 
of his expectations more or less comprehensive in one 
or all of these fields. What is important to note in 
this is that these extended or far-reaching intentions 
spring from intense concentrated natures, that the 
claims of feeling for gratification must be very urgent, 
that mentality must be very responsive to stimuli, and 
the will massive and acute. In short, an intention of 
this sort develops more fully than any other the triple 
aspects of the mind ; it conveys the different directions 
or elements of personality and forces them into a 
homogeneous alliance, so that the man becomes con- 
solidated, consistent, and influential. All intention 
has this tendency, because intention normally involves 
the three functions of mind, but an intention which 
incloses a life draws more equally upon each and more 
continuously. On the other hand, such intentions can 
only spring from natures well advanced in mental 
grade, and it is a natural corollary that an infinite 
mind must have an infinite intention, and such an 
intention must infinitely express infinite feeling, 
thinking, and willing. These extended intentions are 
analogous to Dr. Bain's "aggregate aims," but stand 
on a higher plane, they have an ethical significance. 
The history of such intentions would, of course, reveal 
violent alternations of interest or lassitude; the inten- 
tion often fails and deteriorates until an exhausting 

120 



The Articles of Intention 

effort revives it, or the sunshine of success warms it 
into animation, or it is recalled by some appropriate 
appeal to our passions, interests, or thought. 

VII. Intentions may be latent or manifest; that is, 
they may remain in an embryonic state undeveloped 
and unrealized, or they may assume a veritable reality. 

Intention may be potential or actual ; it may pass in 
the subtle process of development from a state where 
its elements are ready to combine, intermingle, and 
precipitate it, through a phase of formation wherein 
it grows more and more distinct, until it culminates in 
action or some mental effort directed toward an end. 
The fundamental ingredient and the reagent which 
develops intention within the mind is desire. Desire 
we are taught to regard as the expression of the wants 
of our system for pleasures remembered, and it will 
be strong or weak as the specific pleasure recalled and 
desired appeals powerfully or mildly to our feeling. 
"Desire," says Dr. Bain, "is that phase of volition 
when there is a motive but not ability to act upon it." 
Thus the recollection of music enjoyed will awaken a 
desire to repeat the pleasurable sensation it provoked, 
and will be more or less strong as our nature craves 
this satisfaction with greater or lessened appetite. But 
there is a genus of desire somewhat different from 
this exact or normal type. Dr. Bain says (Emotion 
and Will) : "Mere capabilities of pleasure do not 
evoke desire; we may be so constituted as to take 
pleasure in music, in pictures, in science, but, if we 
have been utterly debarred from the slightest taste of 

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The World as Intention 

such things, desire does not arise." This does not 
cover the ground. We would say that in a nature so 
constituted as to take pleasure in these things even 
when they were entirely removed, there would arise 
a restlessness, a vague distributed uneasiness and 
palpitation, which, though it could not articulate its 
needs, disturbed and pained the system and reduced its 
nervous energy. And it would quite inevitably in 
highly organized and capable natures prepare for itself 
by a creative act the pabulum and satisfaction it 
craved. Such was Cimabue, who "was early sent by 
his parents to study grammar in the school of the 
convent of Santa Maria Novella, where (as is also 
related of other inborn painters), instead of conning 
his task, he distracted his teachers by drawing men, 
horses, buildings, on his schoolbooks i" 1 or Giotto, of 
whom it is related that "about the year 1289, when 
Cimabue was already old and at the height of his 
fame, as he was riding in the valley of Vespignano, 
about fourteen miles from Florence, his attention was 
attracted by a boy who was herding sheep, and who, 
while his flocks were feeding around, seemed intently 
drawing on a smooth fragment of slate, with a bit of 
pointed stone, the figure of one of his sheep as it was 
quietly grazing before him. Cimabue rode up to him, 
and, looking with astonishment at the performance of 
the untutored boy, asked him if he would go with 
him and learn; to which the boy replied that he was 
right willing, if his father were content. The father, 

1 Italian Painters, Mrs. Jameson. 
122 



The Articles of Intention 

being consulted, gladly consented to the wish of the 
noble stranger, and Giotto henceforth became the 
inmate and pupil of Cimabue." 1 

Genius is so sensitively and elaborately constructed 
that its internal action, once started by the simplest 
external reactions, follows a rapid and independent 
development, certainly only perfected, or indeed toler- 
able, as it has been educated and been brought under 
the influence of other talents. This, however, is not 
the precise exception that can be taken to Dr. Bain's 
assertion. Desire arises in its more subdued or gener- 
alized forms when we appreciate the pleasures others 
receive from participations, indulgences, exercises, 
which we have never experienced. A reproductive 
imaginative realization of their enjoyment is produced 
by the demonstrations of delight accompanying their 
acts, and the aspects of the acts themselves, and we 
may be said to have an ideal premonition or feeling 
of their experience so as to awaken a desire in us, 
which may be very irregular and easily overcome or 
dissipated, or very strenuous and overpowering, ac- 
cording as our quickness of emotional sympathy with 
the pleasure contemplated is slow or rapid. For ex- 
ample, I am not an equestrian, but the sight of riders 
awakens momentarily a keen wish and desire to be 
on a horse's back. I have no pleasing recollection of 
riding, but the thought of rapid motion at a height, 
in the free air, the imagined sense of control over a 
vital mechanism, the expression of animation and 

1 Italian Painters, Mrs. Jameson. 
123 



The World as Intention 

health in those who ride, their own enthusiasm, an 
appreciation of the skill shown in riding, and a sug- 
gestion of vanity as to the attractive appearance a 
good rider presents, all unite to embody in my mind 
a feeling of riding unrealized, and desire springs up 
as a natural consequence. Dr. Bain thus adverts to 
this (Emotion and Will) : "It is known that we long 
abundantly for things that we have no experience of. 
What are the dreams of young ambition but longings 
after things entirely unknown, and, it may be, grossly 
misconceived? The case is one that admits of the 
easiest explanation. Our experience contains enough 
to set going the constructive imagination; we have 
certain known delights, and certain known pains, and 
we can easily suppose a state of things where the de- 
lights have the fullest play and the pains the least. 
Partly from our knowledge and partly from our 
ignorance, we attribute this state of things to a certain 
worldly position, although we have not occupied that 
position. The materials of our desire are all found 
in experience, there being nothing new but the group- 
ing of them, and the illusion that connects them with 
a certain specific object. The desire of immortality 
after death cannot be founded on fact ; it is nourished 
solely by the longing for what is pleasurable." 

Intention will be unformed when desire is in this 
vague and generalized condition. Intention is hidden 
and nascent when desire is weak, and feeling conse- 
quently imperfectly aroused. Now, desire involves 
the will actively at once, if the powers of volition un- 

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The Articles of Intention 

der the circumstances are available or practicable, and 
if, further, the desire is one which our education or 
temperament can tolerate. I may desire to fly, but 
the will is powerless to help me to that end, except so 
far as it, in conjunction with thought, brings about a 
solution of a curious and unsolved mechanical prob- 
lem. Or I may desire to kill a man, but it fails to 
become an intention, because it is banished as a 
criminal or a dangerous design. 

Feeling and will involved, the last element of an 
intention is attached to the nucleus in thought, by 
which an intellectual supervision or stimulus is se- 
cured. When these elements are all feebly repre- 
sented, or their mutual coherence is unfinished and 
indefinite, the intention floats in a nebulous haze of 
mental vapor, unformed and impalpable, apt to be 
reabsorbed in the routine currents of mental move- 
ments, or to be condensed and thrown down as a new 
acquisition and product of our mind. There are some 
apparent exceptions to be stated to this general and 
natural position; for we have seen (under article III) 
that there are intentions of the will and of thinking, as 
well as of feeling, and we have made strong desire 
expressive of strong feeling. But these intentions of 
will and thinking would imply that we can have in- 
tentions where desire as an expression of elementary 
emotion is absent. Desire as a motive of feeling can 
never be absent in any intention, but it may be com- 
paratively suppressed in an intention of will or think- 
ing; that is, it may be in a lower key, less acute and 

125 



The World as Intention 

exasperating, more solemn or massive, more imbedded 
in the strata of mind, but initiating a gradual motion 
of the mind in a certain direction with a very serious 
and profound impulse, as in intentions of thinking. 
Or desire, as in muscular exercise or exploits, may be 
very slight, but enough to bring into action trained 
muscles and spontaneous physical effects under the 
command of the will. Such intentions are objectively 
manifested, though desire, as a motive feeling, may 
be much reduced in force. Their exemplification de- 
pends upon the training of our faculties and bodies; 
they are intentions carried out without the impelling 
power of feeling, expressed in desire, by the self- 
regulating machinery of a cultured mind or a skillful 
art. These form what we call impersonal intentions, 
as distinguished from personal intentions, when 
desire, expressive of feeling, is coequal with the scope 
of our design. They are intentions in which the ele- 
ment of feeling has receded more and more as their 
objects are more and more easily attained, through 
the automatic action of our organism. The moment, 
however, resistance or friction is met in an intellectual 
task, or an athletic or artistic display, then desire, 
before sleeping, springs forward, feeling is aroused, 
and the intention, suffused with emotion, becomes the 
replete expression of the individual. 

Intentions may remain latent for a long time, like 
seeds which, containing the necessary nutriment and 
elements for growth, fail to be brought under the 
conditions and influences which will start their 

126 



The Articles of Intention 

germinal powers. Our wish approximating intention 
awaits the occasion when it may become an intention. 
Or desire, will, and thought, having lightly drawn 
together, dispose the mind to turn in a certain direc- 
tion and the mind tilts that way by an imperceptible 
oscillation. Accident suddenly forces into their 
delicate collocation a magnetic power, and the inten- 
tion is revealed. A war creates a great commander, 
a sudden emergency an inventor, a chance lesson an 
artist, and in less splendid ways the undiscerned and 
unconsolidated mental aggregate in many men and 
women are found to need certain objective surround- 
ings to throw them down as definable mental realities. 
We can also often produce intention by artificially 
stimulating desire, which revives our feeling, draws 
upon volition, and engages thought, since desire, * 'be- 
ing grounded on experienced gratification, is raised 
from dormancy to activity by the suggestion of a past 
pleasure'' (Bain). 

VIII. Intention may be recognized quite freshly in 
the mind through the mind's own activity, or it may 
arise under the stimulus and irritation of exterior 
circumstances. 

We do not mean that the mind can originate inten- 
tions until its capabilities have been aroused by contact 
with the outer world, until it has become the receptacle 
of a multitude of impressions, its innate adjustments 
and activity tried, and the complicated network of 
crossed and recrossed feelings and thoughts variously 
developed through experience and education. But we 

127 



The World as Intention 

do mean that the mind, after development, withdrawn 
within itself, more or less settled in its interior ar- 
rangement, sorting over its memories, yielding to 
spontaneous stimuli, hints, and inexplicable motions, 
may devise intention beyond the influence of exterior 
incentives or suggestions. A sort of internal molecular 
motion, so to speak, engenders new designs which 
correspond to the needs of the mental system or entail 
pleasure and improvement as the consequences of 
their attainment. Such intentions frequently arise 
from an examination of ourselves, a review of our 
acquirements, moral status, and abilities. They be- 
long also to a general motive of completion, which has 
reference to our outfit as deficient or useless, or to the 
aptitudes of our system as undeveloped or neglected. 

The weight of external circumstances in forming 
intentions is evident; personal appeals, sudden emer- 
gencies, a new interest awakened upon coming into 
new associations, better instruments or opportunities, 
etc., etc., all may help to start up new impulses, which 
are shaped into intentions very naturally. Peter Bell's 
sudden encounter with a grieving ass and a corpse 
changed his life : 

"And Peter Bell, who, till that night, 
Had been the wildest of his clan, 

Forsook his crimes, repressed his folly, 

And after ten months' melancholy 
Became a good and honest man." 

It was the Hortensius of Cicero which arrested Saint 
Augustine and began the singular convulsion in his 

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The Articles of Intention 

nature which left results so momentous and enduring. 
Prince Harry becoming King Henry banishes the mad 
antics of his riotous youth, and on the throne assumes 
the austerity and lofty demeanor of royalty : 

"And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you: 
My father is gone wild into his grave, 
For in his tomb lie my affections, 
And with his spirit sadly I survive, 
To mock the expectation of the world, 
To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out 
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down 
After my seeming. The tide of blood in me 
Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now: 
Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea, 
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, 
And flow henceforth in formal majesty." 

IX. The strength of intention is dependent on the 
amount and kind of will involved, and this again is 
conditioned on the vividness and quantity of desire 
which prompts the intention, and, in a full intention, 
on the accuracy and thoroughness of intellectual 
foresight. 

The strength of intention is determined by the 
strength of desire, and by strength we mean its carry- 
ing power, its durability and longevity, its power of 
survival against opposition and over periods of dis- 
couragement and defection. Desire of a certain im- 
pulsive and fiery order carries a person along with 
some velocity for a short time and culminates in an 
act, but it scarcely is adequate for the needs of inten- 
tion. Intention puts on more and more clearly and 
forcibly those manifestations which are proper to it 

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The World as Intention 

as it embraces a measurable period of time; then it 
presents perspicaciously the idea of "fixation/' which 
we have emphasized above (under article VI), and 
the mind seems undergoing a sort of orientation by 
which its parts are drawn into lines striking like a 
mountain trend or a group of parallel valleys in one 
direction. We have given a wide latitude of meaning 
to intention, and a simple act conceived and executed 
in a very short time — a minute — so long as it repre- 
sents the confluence of feeling, willing, and thinking, 
is an intention ; and it is evident that so wide an appli- 
cation gives our whole existence an intentional ex- 
pression, outside of spontaneous, involuntary, and 
necessary acts. But intention is not so developed in 
these condensed examples as to enable us to separate 
its parts; it does not display its inherent structure; 
and intentions so evanescent are alternating currents 
that polarize the mind intermittently, keeping it in 
rapid oscillation, from this to that, failing to modify 
and reaggregate its elements in conformity to one 
strike, as in a sedimentary bed we find a constant 
movement has aligned all the pebbles in one direction. 
They at least fail to do so except they represent the 
subordinate motions of a larger movement which em- 
braces them all (also under article VI) ; and we shall 
see in a later chapter that in reality they are very gen- 
erally such subordinate motions, and therefore, how- 
ever minute, have a tendency to fix the mind in one 
direction. This belongs to a wider discussion. (See 
Chapter V.) 

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The Articles of Intention 

Capricious motions of the mind and body are 
abortive, unsymmetrical, embryonic intentions; they 
are sudden and irregular, generally a flux of feeling, 
an outburst of action, or an intense and quickly dissi- 
pated thought. They lack that conformation which 
we designate as plan, and plan can only be perfected 
as the intention subtends some time for its comple- 
tion. The will involved in intention is dependent on 
desire as a motive of feeling, for, as Dr. Maudsley 
says, "When we exert will either to think closely or 
to do resolutely we draw upon the affective life, or 
life of feeling, for the driving force. The intellect 
deals only with the clearness or dimness, the deflnite- 
ness or indeflniteness, of ideas; it supplies no motive 
energy; all the ideas in the world might pass through 
it without there being any feeling or desire in relation 
to them — without appetence or inappetence; it would 
never experience the least motive of indulgence 
toward one rather than another, would never tend to 
one rather than another. The desire tingeing any idea, 
the affective tone or element of the idea, its motive 
power comes from the affective life." 1 

But the strength of an intention is dependent also 
upon the clearness of thought as to our aims, their 
desirability, and the ways of compassing them. Fi- 
nally, intentions will vary indefinitely with different 
individuals, according to their temperaments and tastes 
and education; in some, desire arises with intolerable 
urgency, intentions are quickly formed and may be 

1 The Double Brain, Mind, vol. xiv, p. 40, H. Maudsley. 
131 



The World as Intention 

strenuously followed or they may be suddenly aban- 
doned when new desires supplant the old ones, or 
obstacles appear which caution and labor and time 
only can surmount; thought will minister to feeling 
in many, and prospective pleasures and advantages be 
so accurately determined that the will receives a con- 
stant augmentation of power; in some, great force of 
will is liberated by comparatively a slight access of 
feeling, while others possess minds which, like that 
given by Scott to the master of Ravenswood, are 
"unwillingly roused from contemplative inactivity, 
but which when once put into motion acquire a spirit 
of forcible and violent progression"; the objects of 
desire vary with everyone, while the penurious dis- 
pensations of nature and fortune preclude to most of 
us any further intention than a respectable discharge 
of the duties of common living. 

X. The growth of intention. 

We have up to this point spoken indiscriminately of 
intentions as mental projects, acts by which such de- 
signs are executed, and indefinite arrangements or 
predispositions of the mind toward certain things or 
actions. This looseness and generality of phraseology 
has led us, we think, into no serious mistakes of state- 
ment, but it is now necessary to separate these stages 
of intention and indicate some important inferences 
to be drawn from their existence. An intention in the 
mind, before any muscular movement other than those 
inseparable from meditation or the less pronounced 
and more transient moods of thinking has been set up 

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The Articles of Intention 

for its accomplishment, is an intention in idea. In it 
feeling, willing, and thinking are all conjoined, desire 
has been recognized, volition instantly trains the 
equipment of thought upon what we desire, and there 
emerges a definite condition of mind, as in earnest 
attention, or in some aim or design for which time 
and preparation are necessary. An intention in act 
follows when we exemplify the requirements of our 
mental purpose by taking certain measures, putting 
ourselves in certain attitudes, starting off a chain of 
events which culminate in its completion, etc. Finally, 
there is intention in potentiality — transcendental in- 
tentions — when a mind or temperament appears in 
which, while we study it, no conscious disturbance or 
movement has occurred, but of which we can say with 
absolute certainty, under such conditions, incitements, 
experiences, or solicitations, such and such intentions 
must arise. There are written invisible tendencies in 
all of us that form the infallible guides for such pre- 
dictions, and they need not be regarded as the peculiar 
accompaniments of rare natures. All men love flat- 
tery, power, wealth, position, fame, applause, and it 
presupposes no exceptional powers of divination to 
foretell that where these appear attainable men will 
form intentions to secure them, through the invincible 
predisposition — the potential intentionalities — of their 
minds. And it is also certain that in the great 
majority of cases they will employ similar instrumen- 
talities, perform similar acts, and pursue them with 
similar tenacity and earnestness. The variety of 

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The World as Intention 

physical accidents which diversify life, and the 
heterogeneous assemblage of duties and services in 
life, will make the concrete expression of each man's 
life somewhat different from that of his neighbor ; but 
their intentions in their more abstract forms will be 
alike, and we shall dwell upon the fact with some in- 
terest hereafter that the intention of all living is life 
itself. This subject holds out fascinating vistas of 
research and inquiry, as to the specific intention of 
different ages of the world in history as to whether art 
or war or letters or religion or conquest or lust or 
gain or magic or play or philosophy or inspiration were 
the intentions of different periods. For as there is 
implied a potential intention in the physiognomy of a 
man or woman, in the weight and construction of 
their brains, in the outline and poise of their frames, 
so there arises in different eras a generalized intention 
which is the aggregate expression of all its social 
units striving to compass their individual intentions. 
It may be remarked that this observation is only a 
changed form of a very trite homily that different ages 
have different characters. It is true that character 
influences intention and that different characters vary 
in their ways and means of achieving their intentions, 
but intention involves something more than the or- 
dinary acceptation of character, and it affords us a 
scheme of analysis of a period by which we examine 
its will power, its emotional life, and its intellectual 
force. Nor is this all. We have reviewed the acci- 
dents and circumstances of intention, we have noted 

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The Articles of Intention 

three classes of intention, and in reviewing an age we 
could note its intention, the resistance to that intention, 
volitional or circumstantial, to what extent will, feel- 
ing, or thought was united in it, whether it was 
apparent or latent, whether, indeed, it could be de- 
tected at all and was only potential and never 
developed, whether there were varying or simulta- 
neous or opposing intentions. We do not know 
whether this research would yield new results in the 
study of different periods — perhaps not ; but we think 
it might afford a novel point of view whereby material 
and conclusions already accepted might be, so to 
speak, rearranged and produce effects suggestive and 
interesting. 1 But with that we have nothing to do; 
let us fix our eyes more closely upon the growth of 
intention. Desire raised through suggestion or recol- 
lection, or through a generalized idea and an antici- 
patory feeling of something desirable, the will at once 
is aroused, and answers the appeal of the feelings by 
bending the mind toward its object. It is unnecessary 
to discuss free will, for it is certain that, any desire 
being allowed, the will responds conclusively as desire 
stirs the rudimentary springs of volitional power. 
Desire implies the completion in happiness of an in- 
complete state ; it asserts the need of something which 
our system craves, without which it is defective and 
restless and inefficient. Will, whose roots are inter- 

1 It might be noted that in national crises intention became conspicuous, in 
peace and prosperity hidden or undeveloped or changed; that early races, 
savage communities, had few or no or degenerate intentions; that with advance 
in civilization and by the growth of freedom the intention became coextensive 
with the whole nation, and was not the privilege of rulers and titled classes only. 

135 



The World as Intention 

laid among the primal instincts of self-preservation, is 
immediately concerned and animates the organism 
throughout, and the mind is thrown into an attitude 
of attention, is directed and inclined by an obvious 
tilt toward the object of desire. Of course, as we have 
suggested, the force of desire will vary greatly, and 
it may produce only a thrill or pulsation of momen- 
tary interest which is too slight or ephemeral to draw 
the mind in its direction, because it releases too slight 
or ephemeral a discharge of will power. But presum- 
ing that the desire is adequate in degree and amount, 
that the will has fixed the mind upon its contents, then 
the third factor of the mind's activity — thinking — is 
fastened upon the growing nucleus of an intention. 
Thought soon invests the whole subject, penetrates it, 
illuminates it, and controls it. This is the critical 
moment in the growth of intention. Thought intensi- 
fies desire, it reproduces the objects of desire more and 
more clearly, it points out the means of obtaining 
satisfaction, it justifies, explains, and exhilarates de- 
sire. Indeed, thought is most discernible in the first 
sproutings of desire, it interleaves the germinal layers 
of feeling, and in all desires a process of cogitation is 
induced. But in the growth of intention thinking 
comes in with absorbing interest and envelops the 
mind in the last formative stage of the intention. 
When the desire is recognized, so to say, summoned 
and stamped as current and valid, then thought is 
implicated, and its action is that of intensification. 
If I desire to imitate a man in some peculiarity 
136 



The Articles of Intention 

which attracts me, or for more rational reasons think- 
ing upon him, the advantage accruing from his 
qualities or actions, the ways of gaining similar 
virtues, imaginative reproduction of myself as pos- 
sessing them, all excite, inflame, and strengthen the 
first movements of envy or imitation. The desire 
grows into an intention, and thought, reacting more 
and more upon desire, brings larger and larger in- 
stallments of will power into it, or, to speak more 
expressively, it reinforces the field of attraction which 
induces will. Intention in idea becomes an intention 
in act, and there supervenes a series of phases charac- 
terizing pursuit, in which the object we search or 
pursue is either approached or missed. If the former, 
the intention realizes itself by degrees, and becomes 
more and more fixed, until it disappears through its 
own solvency in attainment; if the latter, it may dis- 
appear by a mental rejection on our part, or be re- 
newed with more vehemence and power than at first, 
especially if inspection shows we have made a mis- 
take in our plans and means. Thus thought furnishes 
the nutriment to feeling or desire, and by defining its 
objects, reproducing them, paving the way to them, 
strengthens will and maintains intention; or it may 
overthrow desire, sapping its vitality by proving it 
useless or impossible or pernicious, and thus arrest the 
growth of intention and kill it. Finally, the tran- 
scendental intention — the potentiality of mind — pre- 
cedes the intention in idea and act, it is their logical 
antecedent. 

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The World as Intention 

XL The ethical import of intention. 

This subject is discussed in Chapter V, under Con- 
duct and Creed as Intention, and we only place here 
a general proposition relative to it which is there ex- 
panded and defended. The proposition is that re- 
sponsibility is incurred for intentions in idea, not for 
acts, because acts, if voluntary and premeditated, are 
the results of intention, but responsibility is also in- 
curred for potential, transcendental, intentions, those 
which, inherent in the tissue and substance of a man's 
mind, and being good and proper, are neither regarded 
nor developed. 

XII. The signs of intention. 

The signs of intention are contrivance, application, 
and approach. To contrive is to gather together and 
to assort and to combine means to an end; and while 
it may comprise elaborate calculations and extensive 
mechanical devices, it is also as properly applied to a 
selection of plans of action, to an arrangement of 
employment, to the most simple combination of 
measures to attain a result. It implies comparison and 
deliberation, and suggests a taking up and abandon- 
ment of successive notions or solutions or parts until 
we hit upon the exact series in the exact order which 
will achieve our designs. It is quite certain that where 
we detect contriving and contrivance we can assert in- 
tention. "Wherever," says Dr. Paley, "we see marks 
of contrivance we are led for its cause to an intelligent 
author. And this transition of the understanding is 
founded upon uniform experience. We see intelli- 

138 



The Articles of Intention 

gence constantly contriving, that is, we see intel- 
ligence producing effects, marked and distinguished 
by certain properties; not certain particular proper- 
ties, but by a kind and class of properties, such 
as relation to an end, relation of parts to one another, 
and to a common purpose. We see, wherever we are 
witnesses to the actual formation of things, nothing 
except intelligence producing effects so marked and 
distinguished." 1 

By application we mean the exercise of effort in one 
direction. When we see a man on every occasion 
speaking the French language, which is not his own 
tongue, reading French books, studying French gram- 
mars, and in all manner of ways pursuing the acqui- 
sition of that speech, it is with us a matter of com- 
monplace certainty that he intends "to learn French." 
When we observe an athlete daily exercising in the 
race course, note his interest and exertion, the fre- 
quency with which he has his time taken, and his 
own attentiveness to the changing result, we are con- 
fident that he intends to run a race. When we hear 
of an artist visiting Niagara Falls very often, that he 
is seen sketching it from a number of different points, 
that he is accustomed to take notes of it both in 
different situations and under contrasted effects of 
weather, we are about as positive as we would be upon 
direct personal assurance that he intends to make a 
painting of it. Application, persistent, unwearying, 
enthusiastic devotion to some single avenue and sub- 

1 Natural Theology, W. Paley, chap, xxiii. 
1 39 



The World as Intention 

ject of activity, is a very certain and conspicuous evi- 
dence or sign of intention. 

By approach we mean the successive phases of 
"drawing near" to an object. We watch a tacking 
vessel ; it moves in reversed positions toward and from 
the shore, but with every recurrent "fetch" it is seen 
to be converging upon one point, and though at first 
its purpose was obscured and baffling it becomes patent 
with the renewed inclinations toward this one destina- 
tion; its tacks become more frequent and its intention 
more and more advertised, until it draws up along- 
side the wharf, its sails reefed, and its voyage ended. 
The circling flight of a hawk over a spot where it 
detects its prey lessens the amplitude of its evolutions 
with each repetition, until, contracted to narrow 
dimensions, the hawk drops from the sky and fastens 
upon its victim. The feeling of approach is realized 
in this performance, and the realization of intention 
accompanies it, as the cynosure of the whole motion 
is increasingly indicated. We see a man rising in 
public life ; he steps from one position of advancement 
to another, his public appearances are more numerous 
and his public utterances more regarded, his ability is 
conspicuous, his training adequate, and in this land 
of stimulation and freedom we conceive his natural 
ambition will lead him to the loftiest of all possible 
political aspirations — the Presidency. As he secures 
higher and higher offices of public trust and influence 
this suspicion is strengthened; we seem to see ap- 
proach toward the desire of his life heralded in each 

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The Articles of Intention 

change of place, and when at last he occupies that 
majestic office we discover that its possession was the 
intention of his entire career. 

These three signs of intention — contrivance, appli- 
cation, approach — are inevitably commingled or con- 
nected, they are conjunct consequences of intention as 
an "attitude of mind prompted by desire, guided by 
thought, and directed by will," for they present the 
objective aspects of these mental subjective factors. 
Contrivance is the result of thought, application is the 
exercise of will, and approach arises from, increases, 
and accompanies the ardor of desire. And a further 
important consideration is this, that where we detect 
one of these marks of intention we quickly come upon 
the other two. Where there is approach we shall find 
contrivance and application have preceded and secured 
it. Where there is contrivance there must be applica- 
tion and approach, for the simplest conception of con- 
trivance implies an end partially or wholly attained, a 
juxtaposition of means or parts which attains nothing, 
is not a contrivance. Where there is application we 
expect contrivance and approach, for application 
generates the first and demands the second. 

XIII. The failure of intention. 

Intentions may partially or wholly succeed, or they 
may entirely fail, so far as their virtual external ends 
are concerned. That is, intentions in act may, through 
circumstantial or volitional resistance, be limited or 
overthrown in the achievement of their design; all 
that was anticipated may not be realized, or it may be 

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The World as Intention 

much modified and the exact terms of its realization 
altered from our ideal plans, or we may completely 
break down in its execution and remain to all visible 
appearance where we were. But it is only visibly so; 
an intention in idea fully organized can never fail, 
because its very existence is its success. It always 
impresses the mind with exactly the force put into it, 
or, to put it more exactly, it always turns the mind 
by just the angle and with just the tension which is 
psychologically equivalent to its own strength. This 
is an important and yet very obvious article in the 
doctrine we are unfolding. Acts certainly testify to 
the strength of intention, and no intention of any force 
can exist without some external manifestation. Even 
the erudite effort of an Indian Yogi to dissolve his 
consciousness in the subtle effluence of the universe 
and become an intermixed and responsive molecule in 
the wide waste of being is accompanied by acts, by 
physical states that express his sublime struggle. But 
whether our acts are successful or not, whatever 
fruition they gather or superinduce, our intention in 
idea as a mental act is a valid and complete achieve- 
ment. Its effect on our disposition and character has 
its impressive consequences, whether the acts to which 
it gives rise succeed or fail. It in itself, when com- 
pletely formed, is an intact, matured mental compound 
or aggregation, and cannot be necessarily dissipated 
because the exterior conformation of circumstances 
does not fit its requirements. It may slowly disappear, 
wane, or be abolished; but while it exists sheathed 

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The Articles of Intention 

within the intangible, impenetrable folds and laminae 
of mind no storm of force or wreck of matter can 
touch or disperse it. The failure of an intention in 
idea consist in its not lasting, in its not setting the 
mind its way permanently. And this failure we apply 
indifferently to the very best or the very worst inten- 
tions. This failure may be only partial, intermittent, 
the intention dying out or down to be renewed and 
rekindled. 

To illustrate the very radical meaning we assign to 
these words, and which is further elucidated in Chapter 
V (see also article XI), we will take the example of a 
man intending to be honest. This man intends to be 
honest — desire, will, and thinking are involved in 
it — but with it all he is not honest; the intention is 
unflinchingly adhered to, but it is periodically ob- 
scured or overcome by some emotional insurgency; 
temptation, circumstances, habit, upset and quell and 
scatter it. But after every downfall the intention 
flashes into ardent existence again ; it is even mentally 
strong at the moment of commission, but seems swept 
over or half forgotten by an impulse. It is not re- 
placed by any intention to be dishonest, but by an 
affection of nature which deprives the man of his 
power to put his intention to be honest into acts. This 
is not a paradoxical or an exorbitant supposition. 
Analyze the psychological paradox in Arthur Dimmes- 
dale in The Scarlet Letter for a counterpart, or that 
of Pere Goriot in Balzac's terrible masterpiece, or con- 
sider the innumerable slips into crime, little or great, 

143 



The World as Intention 

unpremeditated, unmeant, by the agent, that constantly 
occur. 

The doctrine of intention exculpates these men and 
directs the eye of judgment upon the persistent under- 
neath intention, over which these acts of sin, not them- 
selves born in deliberate intention, not even tem- 
porarily intentional, swept their fluctuant baneful tide. 
There are intricacies in this matter to be alluded to in 
the chapter devoted to this discussion (Chapter V), 
in which also the important diagnostic value of what 
is theologically known as "contrition" is explained. 

XIV. The convertibility of mind and intention. 

Where there is intention there must be mind. That 
is an axiomatic proposition. If it were denied no 
intelligent theory of either intention or mind could be 
framed. Where there is mind, in its entireness, there 
must be intention, potential or actual. That is not a 
proposition assented to at once. But examination of 
mind in its entireness} that is, where the elements of 
personality — willing, thinking, and feeling — are so 
far present as to generate the ego (see Analytics of 
Belief in a Future Life, Scientific Analysis, Chapter 
II), shows that in quiescent mind intention transcen- 
dentally exists simply because mind then admits of 
intention in the abstract. And in the form of mental 
action, thinking, the ego must desire to think and must 
will to think or it would not think, unless spontaneous- 



1 We suspect that conscious intention may be discovered in the earlier phases 
of mind, in animals, birds, insects, rising toward and sinking from the surface 
of apprehension as the condensation of mind rises to and sinks from the for- 
mation of the ego. 

144 



The Articles of Intention 

ly, and spontaneous mental action is only the recall of 
previous intention in ourselves or in our progenitors 
or in our Creator. So that the mind thinking intends 
to think. And in the form of mental action, willing, 
the mind must feel a desire and think about it, hence 
must intend. In desiring, feeling, there is always 
nascent willing and thinking, and the slightest move- 
ment toward realization brings both into view. So 
that the mind feeling will or does intend. 

This leads to the interesting conception, before 
hinted at in the word "attitude" (under article I), that 
intention is the form of the mind, and that it may be 
a form at rest or in motion as the mind presents a 
potential or an actual intention. For the form of the 
mind expresses not only its objects, aims, designs, but 
its capabilities of action in certain directions, as when 
we see the form of a bird we recognize the intention 
in general of flight which becomes its own specific 
intention to fly to this or that tree. Thus intention 
as form may be observed when the individual as yet 
undetermined toward any object displays such and such 
qualities which we know will inevitably produce such 
and such intentions. But the egoistic mind must, in 
a sane and normal state, have form, that is, a colloca- 
tion of faculties, tastes, and will power, and hence 
where we have mind in this complete sense we have 
always implicit intention. The convertibility, then, 
of mind and intention as data of inference is complete. 
Where we have intention we predicate mind; where 
we have mind we predicate intention. 

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The World as Intention 

XV. The deilniteness and duration of intention. 

The clear outline of intention, embracing an equally 
clear series of details and parts whereby the mind 
anticipates every step it will take in the realization of 
its plans, involves not only a very vivid imagination, 
a distinct prophetic glance, but also very accurate 
knowledge of the obstacles and resistances it will en- 
counter. A mind gifted with such a keen vision must 
be not only naturally powerful, but also educated and 
practiced. The definiteness of intention — by which 
we mean the particularity in all directions of our 
plans, constructive and executive — will be in every- 
one proportioned to the intellectual strength of the 
subject, to the development of the element of thought 
in the intention. And as the intention widens its 
scope, extends the province of its aims, including more 
and more numerous minor designs and reaching 
farther and farther into futurity, the mental foresight, 
to maintain the same minute clearness of prevision, 
approaches sublimity and passes beyond the acquire- 
ments or gifts of man. Familiar instances occur to 
everyone where an intention born in the mind of a 
person with special powers, instincts, and aptitudes 
develops an almost photographic minuteness of detail, 
and the strong, close grasp of purpose, with the com- 
plete understanding of its parts and their attainment, 
bewilders less acutely constructed intellects. Then it 
is, as we have remarked above (under article X), that 
where intention in idea is so distinctly felt intention in 
act becomes a necessity and follows at once, for it must 

146 



The Articles of Intention 

be noted that in natures of this superior organization 
desire seems to maintain a collateral, possibly a 
derivative, intensity. This is seen in men endowed 
with technical and extreme scientific attainments, 
as in generals, engineers, inventors, physicists, and 
naturalists. 

As a corollary from this we conclude that to an 
infinite mind its intention must be infinitely present, 
its elements all foreseen, its direction, development, 
and consequences and phenomena of all sorts abso- 
lutely forecast. 

The duration of intention is dependent on the 
amount and kind of resistance. Intention would al- 
ways be instantly realized, if it were possible, so far 
as intention is plan, and not simply earnestness and 
vivacity. And the stronger the desire, the more 
vigorous the exercise of will, the more complete the 
thought, the more rapidly realization would be 
reached. In an omnipotent mind intention formed is 
tantamount to execution unless it submits to detention 
and voluntarily courts and prepares delay. It is re- 
sistance which prolongs intention, which gives it con- 
tinuity in time, which, indeed, makes it intention at all. 
Nothing else. The man who desires to be rich would 
be rich at the very moment the aspiration formed 
itself in his mind. But he is compelled to form an 
intention and to compass his ends by processes in- 
volving time, because the inseparable resistance of cir- 
cumstances cannot be at once dispelled or overpowered. 
We cannot make wealth by a wish; the insuperable 

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The World as Intention 

laws of society and the world cannot be dispensed with, 
and wealth is attained by enterprise, invention, and 
industry and the whole battery of impediments, circum- 
stantial and volitional, slowly overcome or silenced. 

So intention forms us ; it strains and molds the mind 
as it extends over days or months or years, and an 
intention conterminous with a lifetime becomes the 
expression of a man, is, indeed, the man in so far as it 
has adjusted and arranged, so to speak, the particles 
of his mind in a fixed direction, as it has imbued him 
with a certain meaning and imparted to his utterances 
a peculiar accent. Such an intention was that of 
Palissy to discover the secret of enameling or porcelain 
glaze, which, as Mr. Smiles says, "possessed him like 
a passion." 

"The story of Palissy's heroic ardor in prosecuting 
his researches in connection with this subject is well 
known : how he built furnace after furnace, and made 
experiments with them again and again, only to end 
in failure; how he was all the while studying the 
nature of earths and clays, and learning chemistry, as 
he described it, 'with his teeth' ; how he reduced him- 
self to a state of the most distressing poverty, which 
he endured amid the expostulations of his friends, the 
bitter sarcasms of his neighbors, and, what was still 
worse to bear, the reproaches of his wife and children. 
But he was borne up throughout by his indomitable 
determination, his indefatigable industry, and his 
irrepressible genius." 1 

1 The Huguenots, S. Smiles, p. 34. 
I48 



The Articles of Intention 

But it is resistance which gives intention life; in- 
tention is itself the recognition of resistance; we 
intend because resistance is felt, because without 
effort nothing is attained. A being to whom effort in 
the satisfaction of its wishes was not felt or under- 
gone could scarcely form intentions, or they would 
belong to the most vague and spectral species of in- 
tention, will and thought would be effaced or useless, 
and desire, flowing in an even stream, would bring 
satiety with every agitation of its surface. 

It is inconceivable ; the most gifted mind must over- 
come some inertia, or must preserve the fixedness of 
its pursuit by effort, and it is a familiar fact that 
Newton denied his marvelous genius, seeking to ex- 
change it for the merits of perseverance. The dura- 
tion, therefore, of intention is determined by re- 
sistance ; it can be measured in terms of the latter, for 
when the same resistance retards different minds 
different times, to each it is relatively great or small 
as they are well or poorly fitted to meet it, and in the 
case of the less capable agents the resistance is really 
greater, for to the objective quantity of opposition is 
added the subjective incapacity. 

The duration, then, of intention over a great period 
of time in an infinite or omnipotent mind, which, by 
the assumption, could at once realize its designs, 
reveals resistance, permissive or necessary. 

149 



CHAPTER U 

The World as Intention 

We have seen it confidently asserted that the 
philosophy of evolution is a "declaration against all 
sorts of teleological philosophy," and that "even if 
the theory of natural selection as a cause in the 
genesis of species be proved untrue, that philosophy 
(of evolution) will still stand opposed to any phi- 
losophy that will attempt to bring back 'mind' as one 
of the causes of organic evolution." 1 This is a very 
presuming and hasty statement, and we believe, with 
many intelligent advocates of some sort of evolu- 
tionary process, might be distinctly repudiated as a 
misguided and simply belligerent utterance. We cer- 
tainly would not wish to rob any group of evolutionists 
of the prestige of denying design in the universe if 
they feel disposed to rejoice in so singular and barren 
a position, but we confess to some symptoms of 
alarm when any reputable thinker disclaims the evi- 
dence in the order of things that mind must be predi- 
cated as the cause of, or a cause in, that order. For 
the profound teacher of the orthodox in evolution — 
Herbert Spencer — admits at least that his reasonings 
are in no sense aimed at the permanent or necessary 

1 Letter of S. B. Mitra to Nature (vol. xxxiv, p. 385) commenting on a com- 
munication of the Duke of Argyle entitled "Organic Evolution." 

I50 



The World as Intention 

exclusion of mind, as a cause. Inasmuch as the 
spiritualist "may argue with equal cogency that if the 
forces displayed by matter are cognizable only under 
the shape of those equivalent amounts of conscious- 
ness which they produce, it is to be inferred that these 
forces, when existing out of consciousness, are of the 
same intrinsic nature as when existing in conscious- 
ness; and that so is justified the spiritualistic concep- 
tion of the external world, as consisting of something 
essentially identical with what we call mind" (First 
Principles). It is true that Spencer regards either 
mind or matter "as but a sign of the Unknown Reality 
which underlies both," but anyone, we presume, is 
entitled from the concession made in the former para- 
graph to conclude that this "Unknown Reality," 
which must be Spencer's "ultimate term," may be a 
little more like mind than like matter, or, if not ex- 
actly like either, not imperceptibly allied to a mixture 
of both; in either of which cases, even upon these 
very vague and evasive extremities of thought, mind 
is retained as a causal element. But if mind is re- 
tained as a causal element in so extraordinary and 
gigantic a process as the evolution of this universe, 
it must be retained in considerable amounts, enough, 
we should say, to become egoistic. (See Analytics 
of a Belief in a Future Life, Analysis I, Chapter II.) 
If so, then by article XIV of the preceding chapter, 
where under such conditions the convertibility of mind 
and intention is determined, if we have mind in this 
evolutionary process, we must have intention, and 

I5i 



The World as Intention 

actual intention also, since mind evolving a world, or 
even evolving itself into a world, cannot be regarded 
as quiescent. So that upon the forlorn basis of 
thought provided by agnosticism we still include in- 
tention in the world. Of course we know that there 
are mechanical theories of the world from Democritus 
to Cabanis, Condillac, Helvetius, Vogt, Buchner, 
Feuerbach, and Stirner, but they are obsolescent and 
hardly important. 

As for other evolutionists, mind becomes a very 
serious and commendable agency in the making and 
doing of things. Mr. Wallace says that "the whole 
universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, 
the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme 
Intelligence." Sir W. Thomson has said, "Over- 
powering proof of intelligence and benevolent design 
lies all around us." Dr. Gray has said, "A fortuitous 
cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a 
designed cosmos." Professor Owen has said, "All 
living things have been produced by such law (of 
variation) in time, their position and uses in the world 
having been preordained by the Creator." 

However reassuring such sentiments may sound — 
and there might be found many more 1 — it is quite 
certain that to-day a prevailing suspicion and a very 
broad conviction as well are rife that the old teleo- 
logical arguments have been swept away by the new 
theories; that, to quote Professor Fiske, "it was Mr. 
Darwin who first, by his discovery of natural selec- 

1 These are taken from Dr. C Hodge's little book entitled What is Darwinism? 

152 



The World as Intention 

tion, supplied the champions of science with the re- 
sistless weapon by which to vanquish, in this their 
chief stronghold, the champions of theology," 1 and we 
must think that in some ways they have. 

But Professor Fiske is himself quite unwilling to 
surrender a God and one rationally associated with 
the movements and phenomena of our world, for he 
says: "The teleological instinct in man cannot be 
suppressed or ignored. The human soul shrinks from 
the thought that it is without kith or kin in all this 
wide universe. Our reason demands that there shall 
be a reasonableness in the constitution of things. 
. . . There is in every earnest thinker a craving 
after a final cause; and this craving can no more be 
extinguished than our belief in objective reality. 
Nothing can persuade us that the universe is a farrago 
of nonsense." 2 

Yet Professor Fiske rejects with apparent scorn the 
anthropomorphic God of Dr. Paley and the Bridge- 
water Treatises, and substitutes "a Power, to which 
no limit in time or space is conceivable, of which all 
phenomena, as presented in consciousness, are mani- 
festations, but which we can know only through these 
manifestations," which so far as it goes is the same 
conception as that of Christianity, and as it goes but 
a very little way and presents neither beauty nor pro- 
fundity, being to-day almost a commonplace notion 
with both Christians and eclectics, can never become 

1 Cosmic Philosophy, J. Fiske, vol. ii, p. 397. 
a Idea of God, J. Fiske, p. 138. 

153 



The World as Intention 

the practicable basis of a practical religion. As for 
the bugbear of anthropomorphism, before which Pro- 
fessor Fiske seems to be ludicrously frightened, we do 
not know whether Professor Fiske prayed to his 
Power j or sung hymns to it, or contemplated its attri- 
butes with humbleness and singleness of heart, exer- 
cises familiar, profitable, and pleasurable to Christians 
in their religion, but we do know that if he did, and 
did it with any zeal or enjoyment or benefit, he could 
no more escape the limitations of his nature as a man. 
than can Patrick or Sambo. Anthropomorphism is 
not Christianity, but it is not so gross a disfigurement 
either, in so far as it appears there, as philosophers 
claim, for, constituted as we are, if religion is to have 
any sweetness and any power, it must offer to men 
an appreciable object of worship to which as toward 
earthly fathers they can approach with simplicity and 
with love. We may say it is a matter of little con- 
sequence what God is, as a question of philosophic 
technology, but it is a matter of extraordinary and 
vital importance in this economic and social com- 
munity of ours that our churches shall not be con- 
venticles of hypocrites nor our liturgies the empty 
phraseology of pious formularies or euphonious 
versicles of unmeaning praise. At least in the Chris- 
tian system the instinct of anthropomorphism has 
received its theological gratification in Christ. 

However, the argument of design certainly needs 
rehabilitation. The Paley conception is too mechani- 
cal and straitened to affect the tenor of modern 

154 



The World as Intention 

thought. It fails to control the tide of evolutionary 
ideas, and is out of harmony with current convictions 
that creatures have been produced by the action and 
interaction of law, rather than by fiat, by secondary 
causes rather than, as Darwin puts it, that "at innu- 
merable periods in the earth's history certain elemental 
atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into 
living tissues" (Origin of Species). This rehabilita- 
tion is the more necessary as the robust and beneficent 
dogma of supervision and design in the world is likely 
to be effaced or forgotten by plausible compromises 
and substitutes which seem to make God quasi- 
cognizant of the outcome of things and also a quasi- 
spectator of results, not necessarily intended. As 
though a man turning a kaleidoscope, and anticipating, 
in a general way, combinations of green, yellow, and 
red, should also anticipate surprise and pleasure from 
seeing combinations he could not exactly predict. 
Professor Fiske's proposition is unsatisfactory, be- 
sides being so equivocal as to be almost meaningless. 
For what does he mean by "manifestation" when he 
speaks of a Power "which we can know only through 
these manifestations" ? A man manifests himself when 
he makes a steam engine or when he writes a book, 
or betrays his feelings in the presence of suffering. 
Does Mr. Fiske mean all these kinds of manifestations 
or the latter only ? If he includes the first he is paying 
homage to a very strict form of teleology; if he ex- 
cludes it he denies to his Power a familiar and neces- 
sary phase of mental phenomena. 

155 



The World as Intention 

Furthermore, Mr. Fiske's conception of "God as 
immanent in the universe and eternally creative" 1 in- 
volves his immanency and his creative power in its 
evil, its woe, its filth, its deterioration, its carnage, 
its sickness and inefficiency, for, as Mr. Mill has elo- 
quently written, "Nature impales men, breaks them 
as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild 
beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stories 
like the Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, 
freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or 
slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of 
other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious 
cruelty of a Domitian never surpassed. All this 
Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both 
of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the 
best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and 
worst ; upon those who are engaged in the highest and 
worthiest enterprises and often as the direct conse- 
quence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be 
imagined as a punishment for them." 2 Such a kind 
of an immanent Deity is neither creditable nor 
credible. As for Dr. Paley's simile of the watch, and 
"the Darwinian theory of natural selection," which 
"in the twinkling of an eye knocked all its support 
from under it," the simile retains a great deal, if not 
all, of its pristine vigor and usefulness, while the 
"Darwinian theory of natural selection" is not likely 
to survive long as a valid theory for the origin of 

1 Idea of God, J. Fiske, p. 103. 

2 Three Essays on Religion, J. S. Mill, p. 28, et seq. 

156 



The World as Intention 

species at all. Says Dr. Romanes : "There are three 
cardinal difficulties in the way of natural selection, 
considered as a theory of the origin of species : 
I. The difference between species and varieties in 
respect of mutual fertility; 2. The swamping effects 
of free intercourse upon individual variations consti- 
tutes the next, and perhaps the most formidable, diffi- 
culty with which the theory of natural selection is 
beset; 3. The inutility to species of so large a propor- 
tion of specific distinctions. In view of these three 
grave disabilities under which the theory of natural 
selection lies, I feel entitled to affirm that the theory 
has been misnamed. Natural selection is not, properly 
speaking, a theory of the origin of species; it is a 
theory of the origin, or rather of the cumulative 
development, of adaptations." 1 

However, the day is past when the exact language 
of Dr. Paley can be adhered to; nor can we longer 
admire any image of a God putting together species 
and arranging phenomena as a man selects and com- 
bines bits of steel into a watch, or pulls strings to 
bring a train of puppets into animated action. We 
do not see, indeed, that such an image is fostered or 
offered by Paley, though this is the customary 
caricature with which his argument is associated. He 
shows us evidence of design and says there was a 
designer, and as for secondary causes, he recognizes 
them and says with the utmost frankness and cogency : 

1 Paper read before Linnaean Society, May 6, 1886. G. J. Romanes, Nature, 
vol. xxxiv, p. 314. 

i57 



The World as Intention 

"There may be second causes, and many courses of 
second causes, one behind another, between what we 
observe of nature and the Deity; but there must be 
intelligence somewhere ; there must be more in nature 
than what we see ; and among the things unseen there 
must be an intelligent, designing author. The phi- 
losopher beholds with astonishment the production of 
things around him. Unconscious particles of matter 
take their stations, and severally range themselves in 
an order so as to become collectively plants or animals,, 
that is, organized bodies, with parts bearing strict and 
evident relation to one another, and to the utility of 
the whole; and it should seem that these particles 
could not move in any other way than as they do, for 
they testify not the smallest sign of choice, or liberty, 
or discretion. There may be plastic natures, particular 
intelligent beings, guiding these motions in each case ; 
or they may be the result of trains of mechanical dis- 
positions, fixed beforehand by an intelligent appoint- 
ment, and kept in action by a power at the center. 
But in either case there must be intelligence." 1 

This does not express the mechanism of nature ac- 
cording to the views expressed in this volume, but it 
is sensible, intelligible, and better, it would seem, for 
sound thinking, sound morals, and decent convictions 
than the roundabout, miscellaneous, incomprehensible, 
baffling, and equivocal pantheistic, semi and quasi 
pantheistic schemes so munificently and elegantly 
prepared elsewhere. 

1 Natural Theology, W. Paley, chap, xxiii. 

158 



The World as Intention 

Now, the doctrine of intention brushes away all 
subterfuge, compromise, and innuendo, and it reads 
into the universe not only a great intention so pro- 
found, exclusive, and adequate as to resemble "the 
process of evolution," which, Professor Fiske says, 
"is itself the working out of a mighty teleology of 
which our finite understandings can fathom but the 
scantiest rudiments," but an intention so minute, 
exacting, and comprehensive as to penetrate the 
microscopic recesses of animate creation, the inter- 
molecular play of crystalline forces, the valency and 
motion of chemical atoms. It is an intention which 
rests on man also, both in his aggregate and in- 
dividual conditions, but which respects jealously the 
terms of that man's own self-devised intention as an 
aggregate and as an individual. And this doctrine 
descries another intention, also general and particular, 
pursuing the same avenues as the first, but with a 
reversed current, as though a tracery of channels 
should be filled with oppositely flowing streams so 
that the colliding waters strained their containing 
walls, ruptured and distorted them, and filled their 
courses with noise and confusion. 

Now, if the universe represents intention it is the 
result of an "attitude or form of mind prompted by 
desire, as a motive of feeling, directed by will, and 
guided by thought" (article I). These elements are 
all presented in it; it is not a partial intention (article 
III). We shall find in it application, approach, and 
contrivance, as the evidences of intention (article 

159 



The World as Intention 

XII). We shall conclude that as an intention in act 
it must have been first an intention in idea, and before 
that an intention potential in the mind of the Supreme 
Mind (article X). We shall infer from the immen- 
sity of the universe that the creative intention was one 
of infinite strength, involving infinite desire, infinite 
will, and infinite thought (article IX). But the 
supreme thought is that we shall be led to believe that 
the gradual and still advancing process of realization 
is the consequence of resistance; we shall reach the 
striking declaration that the lengthened, slowly de- 
veloped scheme of the world, with its halts and 
retrogressions, its intricate network of laws, its 
artifice and ingenious interaction of natural events — in 
short, its evolution, so much discussed, analyzed, and 
investigated — is the consequence of two opposite at- 
titudes or forms of mind, prompted by desire, directed 
by will, and guided by thought; briefly, that God in 
the world is in daily conflict with something that is 
not God, and that the marks of this contest are written 
in the aspects of nature as clearly as they are written 
in the nature of man. The duration of intention in 
the world will lead us to this conclusion (article XV), 
and we will endeavor to show that this resistance is 
intentional. 

As we contemplate this world; as we think of it in 
reference to the vast extent of worlds around, beyond, 
beneath, above it ; as we consider the mingled tides of 
animal and vegetable, psychic and sense life that flow 
through it; as we measure its profound physical con- 

160 



The World as Intention 

struction, in what does its intention seem to consist? 
What is the meaning 

"In which the burthen of the mystery 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened"? 

Is it not life? The intention of the world is life, in 
the widest, deepest, highest extension of all the in- 
signia, properties, and contingencies which cluster 
about or inhere in it — the life of body, of mind, in 
themselves, in their environment, and lastly in God; 
the life of individuals as individuals and their life as 
units in a social or hierarchical organism; the life of 
souls and the intense prolongation of life into eternity, 
by reunion with a Life which orders and maintains 
life. To quote the fervid and ecstatic language of 
Fichte : 

"In this constant life and movement in the veins of 
the sensible and spiritual nature my eyes see through 
that which to others appear as dead masses, and behold 
this life continually increasing and growing and 
manifesting itself as a spiritual expression of itself. 
The universe is no longer to me that self-returning 
circle, that increasing, self-repeating game, that 
monstrous thing that swallows itself in order to be 
born again as it was ; it is spiritualized before my eyes 
and bears the peculiar impression of the spirit; con- 
tinual advance to more perfect things in a straight 
line which runs into eternity. 

"The sun arises and sinks, and the stars set and 
161 



The World as Intention 

again rise, and all the spheres keep their round dance, 
but they never reappear exactly as they disappeared, 
and in the luminous sources of life is life and pro- 
longed life itself. Every hour passed, every morning 
and every evening, sinks with new delight upon the 
world; new life and new love drops from the spheres, 
as the dew drops from the clouds, and embraces 
nature as the cool night the earth. 

"All death in nature is birth, and exactly in death 
appears visibly the elevation of life. There is no lethal 
principle in nature, as nature is throughout clear life; 
death does not kill, but that more vital life, which is 
hidden behind the old, begins and unfolds itself. 
Death and birth is simply the struggle of life with 
itself, in order to display itself more clearly and more 
like itself." 1 

This fantastic language, which is vitiated by a con- 
fusing optimism, expresses at least that feeling which 
arises in us upon the contemplation of the world. Its 
history in the dimmest past, before its surface could 
support life, has been the history of a preparation for 
life; the cosmic forces that wheeled it in space, the 
processes of cooling, the laws of radiation, the conse- 
quences of contraction, the necessities of chemical 
affinity all seem a predestined prelude to the appear- 
ance of life. The variegated phases of developing 
life, however prolific in fruitless side issues, however 
industriously blended with elaborate and self-ex- 
tinguishing zoological ornaments, present a retinue of 

J Die Bestimmung der Menschen, J. G. Fichte. 
l62 



The World as Intention 

advancing forms which, viewed as a whole, seem to 
express the unfolding of an intention that life shall 
flourish, extend, and ascend; that its functions shall 
become more multiplied, more intense, and more ele- 
vated; that through it beauty shall enter the world 
and mind be embraced in the widening capabilities of 
matter. The last phases of geological history have 
been, most curiously, given an intentional character 
as fitting the earth especially for human life. Speak- 
ing of the glacial epoch, Professor Prestwich has said : 
"Let us suppose periods of equal temperature before 
and after the glacial epoch. As the radiation of heat 
is in proportion to the difference of temperature be- 
tween the warm body and the surrounding medium, 
the loss of heat by the earth would, if no colder period 
had intervened, have been nearly equal in equal times ; 
but with the greater cold of the glacial epoch the same 
result would be effected in a shorter time, or, what is 
tantamount, the loss in the same time during the 
glacial period would be greater than in the other two 
periods. Thus, supposing we take any given time of 
the glacial period to be productive of a refrigeration 
of the crust equal to that which would be effected in a 
certain longer time of the preglacial or postglacial 
periods, then for a term of time — of length having a 
certain relation to the difference between the two — 
succeeding the glacial epoch the earth would, with its 
outer crust so much below the normal, loose little or 
no heat by radiation, so that during that subsequent 
period the thermo-dynamical effects due to cooling 

163 



The World as Intention 

would be reduced to a minimum or cease altogether, 
and a period of nearly stable equilibrium, such as now 
prevails, obtain. This last great change in the long 
geological record is one of so exceptional a nature 
that, as I have formerly elsewhere observed, it deeply 
impresses me with the belief of great purpose and 
all-wise design, in staying that progressive refrigera- 
tion and contraction on which the movements of the 
crust of the earth depend, and which has thus had 
imparted to it that rigidity and stability which now 
render it so fit and suitable for the habitation of 
civilized man." 1 

Such a general conclusion — that life is the intention 
of the world — is indeed warranted by a general view 
and by perhaps a spirit of observation inclined to 
generalizations and disinclined to estimate or mark 
exceptions or to take unfavorable or disheartening 
views. As Mr. Bonar has said in his study of 
Malthus: "This world and this life are, therefore, in 
all probability, 'the mighty process of God/ not, in- 
deed, for the mere 'probation' of man (for that would 
imply that his Maker was suspicious of him, or igno- 
rant of what was in him), but for the 'creation and 
formation' of the human mind out of the torpor and 
corruption of dead matter, to 'sublimate the dust of 
the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the 
clod of clay.' " 2 But if the intention of the world is 
life it can be forcibly remarked that it seems also to be 

1 The Past and Future of Geology, Inaugural Lecture, Oxford University, 
England, J. Prestwich. 

8 Malthus and His Work, J. Bonar, chap. i. 

164 



The World as Intention 

death; that the equation can be read backward or for- 
ward and either term maintain an exact equivalency. 
So much life, as much death ; this individual or specie 
or genus or family added, those extinguished. If life 
has advanced in variety and scope death has followed 
at its heels and deprived it everywhere of immuta- 
bility, sweeping its rare creations into the tomb and 
forcing it to abate its invention by complete erasures. 
The same retrospect of paleontological history, which 
furnishes the pleasing picture of improvement, recalls 
instances of retrogression as the decline of the club 
mosses and ferns, the dwarfing of the Reptilia, the 
contraction of the Spongiidse, the disappearance or 
decadence of families and orders, as the Brachiopoda, 
Cephalopoda, and Crinoidea, and it exhibits regions 
almost devoid of animal or vegetable existence which 
once in a beneficent climate formed a metropolis 
for both. 

The spectacle of the skies reveals a dead earth in 
the moon, and the relentless prophecy of science is that 

"the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind," 

while the yet more relentless calculations of Malthus 
make the very fertility of life prescribe its own destruc- 
tion or restraint. As Professor Schurman has writ- 
ten: "Existence is an appalling tragedy, with the 
universe for its scene, and for time the duration of 
geological ages; its characters are made up of that 

165 



The World as Intention 

infinitude of individuals which constitute the organic 
world; but so full of horrors is the drama that most 
of the actors are cut down at their first entrance upon 
the stage, while those who escape are doomed to a 
never-ending struggle for life, in which only the 
strongest and best-favored have any chance of reach- 
ing the second scene, that opens, like the first, with 
mutual conflict and all but universal extermination." 1 
It might be difficult to avoid this conclusion. 

Are there not two intentions in the world? Are 
they not opposed and do they not in their conflict ex- 
plain the aggregate picture of the universe? Is not 
such a doctrine the ttq&tt] fyikooofyia to which, as Pro- 
fessor Schurman remarks, he is "convinced every 
positive science — chemistry, physics, and mathematics 
— equally with jurisprudence and ethics leads up"? 
Will it not also help our self-inflicted doubts ? 

But it is evident that such an intention as to produce 
death, to kill, to destroy, to vitiate, to pollute, to adul- 
terate, to stupefy and clog, cannot be a first intention ; 
it is secondary, privative, and obstructional. Life is 
the intention which the world proclaims in every 
vicissitude of its career and throughout the mesh and 
progress of its evolution — life; but death is the re- 
sistance which dissipates the movement of life, which 
dogs it and diverts it and forces the intention which 
controls it into the endless and minute and extraor- 
dinary diversifications of creative energy. The inten- 
tion to stop life in the widest implications of that word, 

1 The Ethical Import of Darwinism, J. G, Schurman, p. 60 
166 



The World as Intention 

as applied to organisms, 1 including motion, force, 
rhythm, form, benignity, virtue, thought, action, 
forces that other intention which gives life into an 
ever-widening area of natural phenomena. This con- 
flict reveals the Power behind the first intention — the 
intention of life — which in its successive extrications 
from its antagonist rises to new and higher shapes, 
though it surrenders in its ascent parts of its ger- 
minant activity to be slowly dissipated and destroyed, 
a process exemplified in the singular feature of "retro- 
gade development," and though it also abandons as 
vestiges of its struggle races and families and orders, 
a fact recognized in paleontology and in natural his- 
tory, in the lists of extinct animals and plants. 

This chase of one intention after another, or, more 
exactly, this resistance of one intention to another, 
forcing the primary intention to change its scope or 
plan, and elude circumvention or defeat by device, by 
contrivance, while it at the same time pursues through 
these brilliant expedients its objective purpose in the 
erection of the ideal and consummate flower of life, is 
the solution of the enigma of the world as offered by 
the doctrine of intention. It is meant to be neither 
figurative nor sentimental, but to invite and ally itself 
with those methods of scientific inquiry which bring 
all theory and speculation to the touchstone and 
crucible of natural laws and facts, the only test, since, 
as it has been well remarked, "existence is under no 

1 We hazard the suspicion that this doctrine may be applied to inorganic na- 
ture, but the path of illustration to be followed is too obscure, too subtle, and 
too susceptible of ridicule for us to attempt it. 

167 



The World as Intention 

obligation to conform itself to our method of cogni- 
zing it" (Lotze). Neither does such a doctrine disturb 
the fundamental tenets of Christian theology; it con- 
firms and develops them, and, though our language 
may seem derogatory, it presents a sublime vision of 
a Divine Author slowly overruling in a solemn and 
profound evolution the vindictive and procreant 
energies of evil. 

Let us therefore compactly arrange the postulates 
of this doctrine and the phenomena which they seem 
to presuppose, and note their identity or similarity 
with those phenomena which as matters of fact we 
have unquestionably on record. 

What, then, does an intention to create or establish 
or make life mean? What source of intention does it 
predicate, and, as an expression, from such a source, 
of feeling, will, and thought, what does it imply? 
To make life means an act which as yet natural 
methods have entirely failed to accomplish, and which 
has, so far, eluded the skill of man to effect, and, al- 
though science is inclined to increasingly regard it as 
a physico-chemical result, it neither sees its way clear 
to a practical demonstration of its opinion nor indeed 
to any definition of the essence of life. We have in- 
deed a famous definition of life from Mr. Spencer, 
but it is only a verbal circumnavigation of an inac- 
cessible problem ; and, though this same definition ad- 
mits of a remarkable philosophic expansion as its 
author traces up the evolving forms of life, it, after 
all, still remains a network of phrases, and in the 

1 68 



The World as Intention 

nature of things can be nothing else, for the laboratory- 
has failed to produce life, and it is only in the labora- 
tory that this question can be answered. 

Nathaniel Alcock, in an elaborate letter on the pos- 
sible efficiency of the lower forms of solar energy to 
produce or stimulate disease, speculates as to "whether 
from the surface of every seething swamp there be 
not poured forth streams of that powerful energy 
which originally fed the growing plants, and which 
when eliminated within the body of man is known by 
the name of life." 1 He says: "Life can be only the 
manifestation of that energy which is set free by the 
reduction of compounds embodying more energy to 
states of combination whicn embody less energy," and 
that "life thus becomes an expression for the sum of 
the difference between the original potential energy 
of the food and the final potential energy of 
the excretions." But this means nothing. It is a 
definition as applicable to a steam engine as to a man, 
for the former represents the effective difference be- 
tween the original potential energy of the fuel and the 
final potential energy of the cinders and the products 
of combustion. Is it not firmly true that, as Professor 
Huxley has said, "the properties of living matter dis- 
tinguish it absolutely from all other kinds of things, 
and . . . the present state of our knowledge fur- 
nishes us with no link between the living and the not 
living"? For, to quote the Rev. W. H. Dollinger, 
"The mystery of life is not the elements that compose 

1 Nature, vol. xxxv, p. 366. 
169 



The World as Intention 

the vital stuff. We know them all, we know their 
properties. The mystery consists solely in how these 
elements can be so combined as to acquire the tran- 
scendent properties of life." 1 Spontaneous gener- 
ations, either that of Aristotle or Dr. Bastian, have 
been abandoned. 

Now, what, in all honesty, in the present state of 
science, are we to say at this juncture and in the face 
of this forcible arrest and discomfiture? Life has its 
laws — assimilation and growth — which are, accord- 
ing to our definition (Prolegomena), the manifesta- 
tions of its properties; but as the chemical elements 
of protoplasm do not exhibit these properties we are 
forced to concede that these properties have been be- 
stowed to matter — at least we are forced to this con- 
cession in the present state of our knowledge as to 
what things are or what we can do with them. 

This bestowal of original nonderivative properties — 
which, of course, presupposes the innate fitness of 
the matter thus endowed to carry and exhibit them 
— this bestowal must be a creative act, a miraculous 
act (Prolegomena), and if so, as it cannot be con- 
ceived upon any tenable grounds as accidental or 
capricious, it must be an intentional act; and if inten- 
tional in a rhizopod, intentional in a medusa, in a 
sea anemone, in a sea urchin, in an insect, a crab, a 
clam, a mammal, and in man — in short, intentional in 
the entire sequence of events and phenomena that 



1 Researches on the Origin and Life History of the Least and Lowest Living 
Things, Nature, vol. xxx, p. 620. 

170 



The World as Intention 

flow from life. The intention discovered in the cellar 
of a house is in kind — however the degree or subjects 
of it vary — discovered and extended to every subse- 
quent stage of the house and to the final details of its 
occupancy and decoration. The intention thus re- 
vealed is seen to be a compound intention opening "a 
path of indefinite duration every step of which can 
only be gained by a new act of will, which act may be 
diversely and infinitely varied with every repetition" 
(Articles of Intention, article VI). If life is the result 
of intention it arises from an "attitude of mind 
prompted by desire, directed by will, and guided by 
thought," and so mind is divulged in the world, and, 
once in, it is difficult to see where we may be able to 
exclude or limit or repress it, how rebuke its extrava- 
gant pretensions, its restless invasions, hither, thither, 
up and down, in all the crannies and operations of the 
universe. We have let loose a spirit which is terrible 
and persistent, which enlarges as we gaze upon it, and 
so subtle and expansive that no implement can impale 
or compress it, which at last with its grandiose and 
intolerable tyranny will force us to worship it and to 
see that all things are by and through and in it. 

No wonder Herbert Spencer has been willing to 
avert so great a disaster. He says: "Construed in 
terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived 
as a product of modifications wrought by insensible 
gradations on a preexistent kind of being; and this 
holds as fully of the supposed 'commencement of 
organic life' as of all subsequent development of 

171 



The World as Intention 

organic life. It is no more needful to suppose an 
'absolute commencement of organic life' or a 'first 
organism' than it is needful to suppose an absolute 
commencement of social life and a first social organ- 
ism." "I learn from one of our first chemists, Pro- 
fessor Frankland, protein is capable of existing under 
probably at least a thousand isomeric forms; and, as 
we shall presently see, it is capable of forming with 
itself and other elements substances yet more intricate 
in composition, that are practically infinite in their 
varieties of kind. Exposed to those innumerable 
modifications of conditions which the earth's surface 
afforded, here in amount of light, there in amount of 
heat, and elsewhere in the mineral quality of its 
aqueous medium, this extremely changeable substance 
must have undergone now one, now another, of its 
countless metamorphoses. And to the mutual in- 
fluences of its metamorphic forms under favoring con- 
ditions we may ascribe the production of the still more 
composite, still more sensitive, still more variously 
changeable portions of organic matter, which in 
masses more minute and simpler than existing 
Protozoa displayed actions verging little by little into 
those called vital — actions which protein itself exhibits 
in a certain degree, and which the lowest known living 
things exhibit only in a greater degree." 1 

But these verbal subterfuges are unavailing. If 
there can be this gradual assumption of life by matter 

1 Spontaneous Generation and the Hypothesis of Physical Units, H. Spencer, 
pp. 6-8. 

172 



The World as Intention 

why are we not witnesses of it somewhere, in our 
laboratories to-day, where conditions are modified 
enough, combinations frequent enough, and curiosity 
active enough to give us the demonstration ? Besides, 
what is this fantastic supposition of life on the way to 
life, of matter getting nearer and nearer organic life 
by additional doses of life that is not organic? The 
idea is senseless, we are half inclined to say men- 
dacious. Life as life is not a matter of more or less ; 
the incommunicable properties of life in their nature 
remain as long as life remains, however decadent and 
supine it may be in its manifestations, and they begin 
with life at once, however feeble and twinkling that 
life is. 1 As to the comparison of organic life with 
social life, social life does begin at once, if social life 
is understood in the widest sense. Two individuals 
living with each other in friendly or commercial union 
is social life ; it begins the moment they agree to do so, 
it ceases the moment they fail or decline to do so. 
Besides, life is a quality, a power, society a compact ; 
life is an irreducible energy, society a very reducible 
mechanism. To talk of life approaching organic life 
is as wise as to speak of a stone on a cliff approaching 
falling the nearer it is pushed toward the edge of the 

1 The identity of life throughout the whole circuit and extent of its manifes- 
tations is recognized. Dr. W. Kiihne says (Croonian Lecture, 1888, "On the 
Origin and Causation of the Vital Movement," Nature, vol. xxxviii, p. 627): 
" We have almost in our own persons lived to see the old anticipation of a single 
kingdom of living things become gradually an established truth through the 
discovery of the cell. After the ground lines of the construction of plants and 
animals out of originally similar nucleated cells had been established by Th. 
Schwann, and since Darwin's immortal work enabled us to derive everything 
that ever lived or will live from one single cell (a very questionable statement), 
we have come to realize that every single organism renews in itself the work 
of past ages, and again builds itself up from a germ similar to that from which 
its most ancient ancestors started." 

173 



The World as Intention 

cliff. The stone is no nearer falling on the edge of 
the cliff than it is a mile away so long as it stays there. 
When it is over the edge it falls, and there is no de- 
liberation about it either. Life is at once life or it is 
not life. 1 And, lastly, we know only of life as organic ; 
to speak of it as a possible essence outside of organism 
is violence, and is unscientific, and, whether our 
temper is pardonable or not, we are tempted to say that 

"this sort of thing is a serious strain 
■ And a terrible tug, and a dangerous drain 
On any man's brain who desires to remain 
Outside the establishments for the insane." 2 

If thus life is intention and the intention of the 
world is life, then that intention must be interpreted 
by the highest life, and hence the intention is life in its 
greatest intensity and greatest variety of parts and 
capabilities. If this is true, then we are afforded 
another illustration of the dogma that the world pre- 
sents an intention, for by article XII of the preceding 
chapter application, approach, and contrivance are 

1 1 may quote here a paragraph from the striking address of Dr. Burden 
Sanderson, delivered before the biological section of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science, in which the theories and investigations of 
science as to the nature of life are instructively reviewed. He says: "The 
discovery of the cell seemed to be a very close approach to the mechanism of 
life, but now we are striving to get even closer, and with the same result. Our 
measurements are more exact, our methods finer; but these very methods 
bring us to close quarters with phenomena which, although within reach of 
exact investigation, are as regards their essence involved in a mystery which 
is the more profound the more it is brought into contrast with the exact knowl- 
edge we possess of surrounding conditions." 

2 Since the above words were written we have read the following remarks 
of Dr. Beale, remarks which we believe the most cautious microscopists and 
biologists reiterate and sympathize in, as pointing to what Mr. C. P. Cox has 
characterized as "the impassable gulf between the not -living and the living." 
Dr. Beale says "that between the living state of matter and its nonliving 
state there is an absolute and irreconcilable difference: that, so far from our 
being able to demonstrate that the _ nonliving passes by gradations into or 
gradually assumes the state or condition of the living, the transition is sudden 
and abrupt; and that matter already in the living state may pass into the non- 
living condition in the same sudden and complete manner." 

174 



The World as Intention 

significant marks of intention. In the history of the 
world we have the remarkable exhibition of a prepa- 
ration for life for the advance of life, toward an ideal 
and for an innumerable series of adaptations, har- 
monies, and apparatus for its preservation, which how- 
ever regarded are certainly like contrivance. We need 
not pause to illustrate this — what we allude to is 
familiar to all; text-books of geology, lectures, and 
popular discussions have made it a common possession 
of readers. We pass to the important task of attempt- 
ing to prove that application, approach, and con- 
trivance are real and not apparent. 

The evolutionist, or at least the Darwinian evolu- 
tionist, holds that life once started the laws of varia- 
tion and heredity, and the exigencies of the struggle 
for existence have done the rest ; life is the "continuous 
adjustment of inner relations to outer relations," and 
any life not so adjusted disappears, or, as Mr. Barratt 
has put it, "the earth is suited to its inhabitants be- 
cause it has produced them and only such as suit it 
live" to which a teleological expert might answer the 
earth is such that only those intended to live so suit it 
as to be able to live. The position of the Darwinian 
evolutionist — and there is no other evolutionist who 
has a scientific argument to combat or question — is as 
expressed acutely by Professor Schurman: "Directly 
or indirectly, then, the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
are, owing to the enormous rate at which living beings 
tend to increase, the scene of universal competition 
and struggle for existence, in which the great 

175 



The World as Intention 

majority must inevitably perish. We have seen, how- 
ever, that all living beings are subject to slight modi- 
fications ; and taking account of the infinite complexity 
of the relations of all organic beings to one another, 
and to their conditions of life, it would be strange if 
some of these modifications were not more beneficial 
than others. In that case the individuals that have 
happened to undergo this profitable variation would 
have an advantage over their rivals. They would, 
accordingly, be victorious in the struggle for life ; and 
transmitting their beneficial peculiarities to descend- 
ants, these would enjoy a similar advantage. Such 
favored forms would spread and conquer, while their 
rivals would first decline and then become utterly ex- 
tinct. This is what Darwin means by natural selec- 
tion or survival of the fittest in the struggle for 
existence." 

Omitting the consideration that Darwin has not ac- 
counted for the initial variations which, perpetuated 
and enlarged or accented, become the new species, 
nor explained some curious facts about prophetic 
organs, and allowing competency to the well-worn 
formula that the interaction and adjustment of forces 
in and outside of the organism have produced it, 
why — may we ask — why are some variations "profit- 
able to the individual of a species" and other varia- 
tions not, and how, by an infinite process of variation 
carried on through countless centuries, do we find all 
animal nature referable to six and only six classes or 
types of structure? It is in this profitableness and in 

176 



The World as Intention 

the idea of types that the doctrine of intention inserts 
itself and abides; for, regarding the first, profitable 
variations are profitable because they induce the per- 
manence of those forms which are intended to survive, 
and those variations are injurious which may induce 
forms which are not intended to live. 1 This strikes 
at the root of the matter, and can neither be evaded 
nor disproved, and is a logical deduction from the first 
assumption that the motive impulse of intention as we 
see it in the world is life in its widest sense. Now, how 
can life in its widest sense, namely, in variety, elabora- 
tion, and promotion, be manifested but by variation and 
by variations which are profitable ? for if they are not 
profitable such life cannot be produced or perpetuated, 
though, as we shall see later, all variation is profitable 
but that which is most so survives, while as a matter 
of fact there is no variation which is not a response to 
immanent conditions. Variation is the most concen- 
trated and profound index of intention; for variation 
cannot be accidental, and variation to be permanent 
appears in a large number of individuals simultaneous- 
ly, otherwise it would be degraded, unless isolated, by 
crossing, to nonspecific averages. Darwin appreciated 
this ; he says : "Until reading an able and valuable 
article in the North British Review (1867) I did not 
appreciate how rarely single variations, whether slight 



1 The phenomena of retrogressional metamorphoses or "degeneration" 
appear to contradict this, but the doctrine regards these either as collateral 
results of the organic movements outside of its classifications or as agencies 
whose apparently maleficent influence may in reality induce beneficial varia- 
tions and so indirectly lead to higher manifestations of life, or, as we have 
said, evidences of the counter -intention. 

177 



The World as Intention 

or strongly marked, could be perpetuated," and an 
overwhelming sense of this has led to Romanes's and 
Weissman's "physiological selection" as a substitute 
or amendment to natural selection. 

Further, the ramifications of intention in the in- 
tricacy of natural dependencies seem almost fathom- 
less, for "the structure of every organic being is re- 
lated, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, 
to that of all the other organic beings with which it 
comes into competition for food or residence, or from 
which it has to escape or on which it preys" (Darwin). 
Now, if all this exquisite composition of parts has 
been brought about by profitable variations how can 
those variations be conceived of as fortuitous or me- 
chanical ? and again, if we review the pages of paleon- 
tology and note the rise of kingdoms, classes, orders, 
and families what desperate greed for intellectual 
confusion is it that asserts the absence of design? 
The organic impulse, the organic current, the organic 
flower and fruitage are less explicable on a theory of 
blind forces than they are on a basis of intention. 

The second large line of evidence for intention is 
in the ordination of type structures to which all 
animal life can be referred — the protozoan, ccelen- 
terate, annuloida, annulosa, molluscoidal, vertebrate. 
How does indeterminate and irrelevant variation ex- 
plain this remarkable classification, not only of all 
living but all extinct forms, not only now but through 
geological ages ? It is true that the Darwinist assumes 
and urges that unity of type means unity of descent, 

i 7 8 



The World as Intention 

but it cannot be shown that types grade into each 
other, nor form exactly a serial line of ascension. 
They have originated either from quite separate 
organisms originally adapted and intended to produce 
their various members, or they have radiated from 
one primordial creation and have done so by a pur- 
poseful and an invincible, included, implanted, inten- 
tional impulse. Darwin does show how (hypothet- 
ically) many groups may diverge from one group in 
the same type; his hypothesis does not show how six 
types arose by fortuitous and indefinite variation from 
one or no type. To adapt and alter his own language, 
characters do not make the type, but the type gives 
the characters, and an apposite appeal to Owen in the 
case of the dugong shows that organs most remotely 
related to the habits and food of an animal may be 
regarded as affording very clear indications of its 
true affinities, for "we are least likely in the modifica- 
tions of these organs to mistake a merely adaptive 
for an essential character." It is a just, perhaps an 
essential, inference that if variations uncontrolled can 
effect the formation of types from some primordial 
organism they will inevitably produce a larger number 
of types than six, unless it can be shown that six 
types of animal structure are all that can survive in 
present terrestrial conditions. If flowers as meta- 
morphosed leaves were produced by erratic variation 
it is difficult to see why such variation has not started 
some different course of metamorphosis, or many 
courses, and that instead of a centripetal arrangement 

179 



The World as Intention 

from sepals to pistils there has not arisen a centrifugal 
order whereby the pistil or pistils were on the outside 
and the sepals in the center. This, of course, would 
seem less natural, but it involves simply beginning at 
the center instead of at the circumference, and by it 
the organs of generation could be protected by the floral 
parts closing over them like hoods or covers. And if 
such a device were unavailable or pernicious why are 
there not seen or found relics of such perishable in- 
novations? The persistent unity of type is something 
natural selection does not explain, or if it explains it 
its explanation is analogous to the assumption of pre- 
ordination; for at last natural selection confesses that 
the factors of life — the "homologous units'' and the 
"incident forces" — were such that no other types were 
possible, but if so, then that stringency of circum- 
scription was imbedded or necessitated in those factors, 
and as those factors could not have arisen by natural 
selection, and from their fixity of relation and pow- 
erful restraining influence on the irresponsible vagaries 
of natural selection itself could not have been acci- 
dental, they must have been intentional. 

The directional character of evolution has been em- 
phasized by Professor Cope (Primary Factors of 
Organic Evolution) very distinctly. He says (p. 24) : 
"Finally, I wish especially to point out that variation 
in animals, and probably in plants (with which I am 
not so familiar), gives no ground for believing that 
'sports' have any considerable influence on the course 
of evolution. This is apparent whether we view the 

180 



The World as Intention 

serial lines of variations of specific, generic, or higher 
characters, or whether we trace the phylogeny of the 
animal and vegetable types by means of the paleonto- 
logical record. The method of evolution has appar- 
ently been one of successional increment or decrement 
of parts along definite lines. More or less abruptness 
in some of the steps of this succession there may have 
been, since a definite amount of energy expended in a 
given direction at a given point of history might 
produce a much greater effect than the same amount 
expended at some other period or point of evolution.' , 
And again (p. 222) : "It has been proved, as it appears 
to me, that the variation, which has resulted in evolu- 
tion, has not been multifarious or promiscuous, but in 
definite directions. It has been shown that phylogeny 
exhibits a progressive advance along certain main 
lines, instead of having been indefinite and multi- 
farious in direction." 

We are at this point enabled to define the doctrine 
of intention as applied to the world, and to exhibit its 
utilization of the facts of science as revealed in this 
century, and separate it also from those abandoned 
systems of thought which made or seemed to make 
the Supreme Mind something like an omnipotent 
mechanic especially ordering and supervising the pro- 
duction of each individual or specific object. And at 
the outset the doctrine of intention assumes a Supreme 
Mind, because, to quote Dr. Kedney, "it would seem 
that in the regard of dogmatics the existence of God 
need not be proven; that what remains for it to do is 

181 



The World as Intention 

to explicate the essential idea; that in some form this 
is involved in the very structure of the human soul, 
and is an element in all its thought; that it is implicit 
in every mental movement or conscious action; and 
thus that its surety is more impregnable than in any 
proof from propositions, for these presuppose and 
imply it; in short, and to use other language, that the 
so-called cosmological, teleological, and ethical argu- 
ments all imply and precipitate the ontological argu- 
ment; and that this last need not be argued for, but 
is the indestructible residuum when all else is ab- 
stracted from human consciousness; and that God is 
the one only existent which it is impossible to doubt as 
eternal." 1 

But if this be assumed, then we are led to the 
presence of an extraordinary Power, for, to quote 
Paley, "it is an immense conclusion that there is a 
God, a perceiving, intelligent, designing Being ; at the 
head of creation, and from whose will it proceeded. 
The attributes of such a Being, suppose his reality to 
be proved, must be adequate to the magnitude, extent, 
and multiplicity of his operations, which are not only 
vast beyond comparison with those performed by any 
other power, but, so far as respects our conceptions of 
them, infinite, because they are unlimited on all 
sides." 2 

Now, we have urged in the previous chapter 
(article XV) that "the duration of intention is de- 

1 Christian Doctrine Harmonized, J. S. Kedney, vol. i, p. 5. 

2 Natural Theology, W. Paley, chap. xxiv. 

l82 



The World as Intention 

pendent on the amount and kind of resistance. In- 
tention would always be instantly realized, if it were 
possible, so far as intention is plan, and not simply 
earnestness and vivacity. And the stronger the desire, 
the more vigorous the exercise of will, the more com- 
plete the thought, the more rapidly realization would 
be reached. In an omnipotent mind intention formed 
is tantamount to execution unless it submits to deten- 
tion and voluntarily courts and prepares delay. It is 
resistance which prolongs intention, which gives it 
continuity in time, which, indeed, makes it intention at 
all ;" and again, "The duration, then, of intention over 
a great period of time in an infinite or omnipotent 
mind, which, by the assumption, could at once realize 
its designs, reveals resistance, permissive or neces- 
sary." This is precisely the state of things before us 
in the world. The Supreme Mind, we have been led 
to assume, is literally supreme, its intention is in the 
world, but that intention is life; why should the de- 
velopment and elucidation of that intention require 
such an endless time, why for the phenomena of life 
itself, as we know it, since its first appearance, are we 
taught by science that at least millions of years were 
necessary, and why is the biologist found murmuring 
at the parsimony of the geologist and physicist ? The 
doctrine of intention answers, "Resistance" — the 
supreme mind is opposed, there is retardation, because 
there is resistance. This is an interesting and preg- 
nant conclusion. But to pass to the further question : 
Is this resistance volitional or circumstantial? It 

183 



The World as Intention 

cannot be entirely circumstantial resistance, for in 
the Prolegomena we were led to believe that the 
Supreme Mind creates, by imparting properties to 
matter; if so, then he controls in the most intimate 
and intrinsic way the character of his agents and 
instrumentalities. The alternative assumption is 
forced upon us that the resistance is volitional. We 
are permitted to regard it as permissive or not, but 
there seems no escape from the singular conception of 
warring intentions. If, however, the primary inten- 
tion is life the resistant intention must be death, and 
what from a practical and scientific review of the 
world's organic history are the thoughts its inspection 
suggests? It is a struggle for existence which, "un- 
less it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, the whole 
economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, 
rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be 
dimly seen or quite misunderstood" (Darwin). 

But the same inspection of the larger dramatic 
aspects of the world turns us away, shuddering before 
the huge panorama of woe and perplexity, the disarray 
of powers and privileges, the calamitous picture of 
crime, the eaten in permanency and changelessness of 
suffering. So monstrous is the sight that it led the 
sensitive mind of John Stuart Mill to exclaim in 
impatience: "It is impossible that anyone who ha- 
bitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his in- 
quiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without 
misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the 
author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously 

184 



The World as Intention 

governed a creation as this planet and the life of its 
inhabitants. The adoration of such a being cannot be 
with the whole heart, unless the heart is first consid- 
erably sophisticated." 1 And the same spectacle forces 
from the lips of a more delicate and believing nature 
the wondering and bereaved cry: "What strikes the 
mind so forcibly and so painfully is His absence (if I 
may so speak) from his own world. It is a silence that 
speaks. It is as if others had got possession of his 
work. Why does not he, our Maker and Ruler, give 
us some immediate knowledge of himself ? Why does 
he not write his moral nature in large letters upon the 
face of history, and bring the blind, tumultuous rush 
of its events into a celestial hierarchical order?" 2 

Here we might appropriate an extraordinary and 
bewildering matter, the war of intention in the world, 
in its natural and in its human history, and animate 
what may seem a dreary and empty hypothesis with 
the pictures of that strife. But we are engaged now 
simply with an endeavor to define and illustrate the 
action of two opposite intentions, in the process of 
making the animate creation and with enabling our- 
selves thereby to look upon that deluge of forms and 
appetites which the natural world presents with less 
stultification and less confusion of ideas. 



1 Three Essays on Religion, J. S. Mill, p. in, 

2 Grammar of Assent, J. Newman, p. 385. 



185 



CHAPTER HI 

The World as Intention (Continued) 

If an intention to produce life has prevailed in the 
institution of this world, and if in the production of 
that life, vegetable, animal, and psychic, a reverse in- 
tention has been aroused, which follows, with its 
obstructive and destructive influences and aims, the 
first intention, we should expect a spectacle identical 
with that which the organic history of our world 
presents. If, further, the implication of such an 
intention is to produce the highest life, widest in its 
capabilities and sensitivities, we should anticipate that 
progress toward such an end, against the baffling 
power of an opposed mind, would appear in a wide 
range of ascending steps diversified by offshoots and 
arrested developments in side lines and issues. For in 
these latter side lines and issues the vitality of the 
first intention would have exhausted itself, while along 
the main trunk of advancing forms it pursues its pur- 
pose more successfully and approaches its maximum 
results with certainty; as when a torrent of water 
breaking out from a high center of distribution rushes 
forth upon a country of less elevation, and encounters 
a series of natural obstacles in hills and ridges through 
which a central valley of marked depression conducts 
it to a distant and lower level. The larger volume is 

186 



The World as Intention 

retained within this deeper conduit, but its mass, 
splintered against opposing highlands, suffers reduc- 
tions, and spills through the tributary vales and 
ravines quantities of fluid which fill these subordinate 
channels and thus reach some diminished and inter- 
mediate goal. Innumerable filaments of running 
water penetrate the yet smaller crevices of the country, 
until a view of the watery invasion would resemble a 
fanlike expansion of reticulating lines. 

Now, it is the hope of modern science to trace from 
one point of origin a vast diffusion of vitalized lines 
of descent, amid which, as a preeminent conduit of 
the deepest and highest life, the line of vertebrate life 
is easily distinguished. And if we trace any hypotheti- 
cal line so devised and, rendered more or less likely 
by embryological study, a line which represents the 
divergence of forms in one type, we shall find it 
spreading from a few centers and terminating in a 
peripheral series of separated organisms whose con- 
nection and ancestral similarity can be followed 
through a network of interlacing and gradually con- 
fluent threads, until we meet the primordial germ from 
which all were evolved. It is in a sense the redupli- 
cation of the picture of the descending and diverging 
paths of water. 

This comparison has been made because it makes 
prominent the idea of opposing intention as a veritable 
cause for the very prolificness of forms, for the endless 
specifications of parts which provide the naturalists 
with their interminable lists, just as the elevations and 

i8 7 



The World as Intention 

ridges of ground sundered and spread the pouring 
mass of waters and made it a forest of streams and 
streamlets. An original intention to make life, and 
one particular and highest form of life, has been met 
by an active and omnipresent intention to restrain and 
extinguish it, and especially to prevent that last and 
extreme flower of life which we call man. The march 
forward of forms has therefore been a perpetual 
escape from an enemy whose presence has diversified 
its manifestations; for by escape in a new form it 
circuitously outrode the hostile principle even though 
it did not in all cases advance toward the objective 
point but was deflected from it. But along some other 
line that advance was being made, and the collective 
result was to fill creation with an extraordinary 
variety of life; and the highest life, which was the 
first intention of the Supreme Mind, appeared at last 
in the center of this profusion, its concomitant and 
result, because though originally intended this highest 
life could not be reached against an opposing inten- 
tion which sought or was permitted to seek to prevent 
it, except through a multiplicity of diverse forms of 
life which were not made for it but were made of 
necessity if it — the highest life — was to be made at all. 
The remarkable conformity of this view of animated 
nature with the view held by science, and justly and 
wisely held, is apparent at once. It can no longer be 
thought that the forms of life, varied and beautiful 
and exquisitely interrelated and adapted, are so many 
benevolent and merciful provisions made immediately 

188 



The World as Intention 

for the purpose of delighting or instructing man. 
That they do so might have been anticipated and is 
in itself inevitable, as they represent steps in the 
process of intention which as an expression of mind 
must always interest and divert and educate a rational 
creature; but they, according to the doctrine, are not 
intentional, in the sense of each having been a special 
objective and predesigned ultimate incident or thing 
for man's delectation. A very little thought and read- 
ing will enable anyone to realize that innumerable 
forms have disappeared which the eyes of men will 
never consider nor his study classify, while to most 
men the long retinue of species before the present (the 
Cenozoic) time has been and always will be a sealed 
book, and for geographical and mundane reasons no 
man nor group of men will ever become cognizant of 
the fauna and flora of the world to-day. It is simply 
foolish and ludicrous to play fast and loose with 
common sense and ordinary experience by trying to 
evade such natural conclusions, and by some hocus- 
pocus of phrases to bewilder us into believing that this 
category of creatures was meant for the edification, 
instruction, and use of man. They have arisen un- 
avoidably in the conflict between two intentions as the 
intermediate and accessory results by which the first 
intention, that of creating life in its highest and 
widest sense, has progressively reached its aim. 1 

1 A striking passage from Wallace's Malay Archipelago may be appropriately 
quoted here. He has been describing the magnificent king bird of paradise 
which he obtained in the Aur Islands, when he closes in this suggestive way: 
"It seems sad that, on the one hand, such exquisite creatures should live out 
their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild, inhospitable regions, 

189 



The World as Intention 

They are devised rather than designed, and have, per- 
haps, appeared unpremeditatedly but logically from 
the very inoculation of matter with the principle of 
life itself. 

For to come down to the facts, if there has been an 
intention of a Supreme Mind to make life in its highest 
and widest sense, what, then, would be its natural 
antagonist? Plainly an intention to undo life, to de- 
stroy and kill it, an intention which, regarded as a 
positive principle, would be one to bring about death 
in its widest and deepest sense. Keeping our eyes 
fixed on natural facts, and disregarding more obvious 
spiritual or religious suggestions contained in this 
statement, what is the actual state of the case in the 
animal or vegetable world? It is a struggle for ex- 
istence, a constantly renewed combat between efforts 
to live and conditions which kill. Now, these condi- 
tions which kill, if analyzed, seem to be in general 
three, apart from the accidents of violence and pre- 
meditated devastation: First, insufficiency of room 
or nutrition for all the claimants to both; secondly, 
physiological derangement, namely, disease; thirdly, 
sterility or racial impotence. 

doomed for ages yet to come to hapless barbarism; while, on the other hand, 
should civilized man ever reach these distant lands and bring moral, intellectual, 
and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that 
he will so disturb the nicely balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature 
as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings 
whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted_ to appreciate and 
enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not 
made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their 
existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by 
every advance in man's intellectual development; and their happiness and 
enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous 
life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well- 
being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and per- 
petuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less 
intimately connected." 

I90 



The World as Intention 

If these, then, represent the aggregate resistance to 
the intention of life it is evident that the first is a 
circumstantial resistance (see Chapter I), it is in- 
volved in the nature of things, as a material neces- 
sity. Twenty organisms craving the same food and 
searching for it in the same spot where there is natu- 
rally not enough sustenance for ten clearly cannot 
be perpetuated there, and some adjustments must 
ensue by which the excess disappears. Disease can 
be traced to the first and to the third condition as 
causes. But sterility or racial impotence is a factor 
which may be spoken of as in some way coming from 
intentional resistance; it is the evidence of a mental 
attitude opposed to life; it is scientifically, that is, 
by exact delineation of cause and effect, inexplica- 
able, and it is practically the organic condition by 
which all manifestations of life are precluded. Of 
course it is a familiar knowledge to all that by fission, 
gemmation, or budding, parthenogenesis, in the 
animal, and by grafts, proliferous growths, roots, 
rhizomes, etc., in the vegetable world continuance of 
life is secured, but it is a supplementary and an 
ephemeral process, and unavailable except in the 
rudimentary and less specialized types of life. 1 
Seminal concurrence is the essential and dogmatic 
system of organic reproduction. 



1 Dr. Asa Gray has written (Darwiniana, p. 347): "The conclusion of the 
matter from the scientific point of view is that sexually propagated varieties or 
races, although liable to disappear through change, need not be expected to 
wear out, and there is no proof that they do; but that nonsexually propagated 
varieties, though not especially liable to change, may theoretically be expected 
to wear out, but to be a very long time about it." 

I 9 I 



The World as Intention 

Now, so far as science can approach the difficult and 
inaccessible secrecies of the matter, uniformity in the 
elements of reproduction induces sterility. Says 
Darwin: "There are two other important conclusions 
which may be deduced from my observations : firstly, 
that the advantages of cross-fertilization do not follow 
from some mysterious virtue in the mere union of 
two distinct individuals, but from such individuals 
having been subjected during previous generations to 
different conditions, or to their having varied in a 
manner commonly called spontaneous, so that in either 
case their sexual elements have been in some degree 
differentiated; and, secondly, that the injury from 
self-fertilization follows from the want of such dif- 
ferentiation in the sexual elements. These two propo- 
sitions are fully established by my experiments" 1 
And the same author in discussing the variations of 
animals under domestication says : "Finally, when we 
consider the various facts now given which plainly 
show that good follows from crossing, and less plainly 
that evil follows from close interbreeding, and when 
we bear in mind that with very many organisms 
elaborate provisions have been made for the occa- 
sional union of distinct individuals, the existence of a 
great law of nature is almost proved, namely, that the 
crossing of animals and plants which are not closely 



J The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom, 
C Darwin, chap. xii. The aberrant instance of Nicotiana tobacum is hardly 
refutatory, since although a cross between two individuals probably in the same 
condition did no good the "offspring of plants, which did not profit at all by 
being crossed with a plant of the same stock, profited to an extraordinary 
degree by a cross with a slightly different sub variety." 

192 



The World as Intention 

related to each other is highly beneficial or even neces- 
sary, and that interbreeding, prolonged during many 
generations, is injurious.'' 1 

Herbert Spencer has emphasized the universal de- 
mand in organic life for the union of differentiated or 
diversely conditioned elements for the production of 
robust and fruitful individuals, because as "there is 
an approach to equilibrium between the forces which 
produce growth and the forces which oppose growth," 
there is "the need for overthrowing this equilibrium, 
and reestablishing active molecular change in the de- 
tached germ — a result which is probably effected by 
mixing the slightly different physiological units of 
slightly different individuals." 2 As Spencer expresses 
it, this equilibrium of "the actions of the units on the 
aggregate" and "the reactions of the aggregate on the 
units" brings about the final rest or death of the or- 
ganism, and general quiescence means extinction. 
Variation is the opposed remedy, it is the implanted, 
the deeply rooted tendency in things, the buried evi- 
dence of intention on the part of the Supreme Mind, 
which mind has energized matter for the sake of its 
own final cause, the creation of the highest and deepest 
life. Variation promoting stronger life contracts or 
expels the empire of disease. Variation also meets the 
material impediments that derange or circumscribe 
life, since it offsets the restrictions of space by 
diversity of function and physiological regimen. This 

1 Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.C Darwin.vol. ii, p. 1 26. 

2 Principles of Biology, H. Spencer. 

193 



The World as Intention 

embraces the scope, tendency, and text of modern 
science. 

In discussing variations in their relation to intention 
we must distinguish between variations which are 
formally prescribed in the texture and contents of 
the seed, and variations which are adaptations, simply 
representing the plasticity of the organism and its 
response to its environment. In other words, there 
are potential variations and variations in fact, corre- 
sponding to two similar sorts of intention (see Chap- 
ter I, Articles of Intention), and while the former 
may be prevised, it is not insisted on. Potential varia- 
tions are inherent capabilities of modification which 
according to circumstances may or may not appear. 
They are intentional in the mass in the Supreme Mind, 
but are not individually initiated by that mind, though 
they spring from an antecedent convergence of in- 
tentional acts by which they become possible. Factual 
variations are such as represent stringent, exact, 
specific intentions and are instituted with reference to 
the first intention, namely, the creation of Life in its 
widest and highest sense. 1 A few examples are neces- 
sary to explain and illustrate this important distinc- 
tion. It should be admitted at first, however, that, 

1 "But I also came to see, at a very early time, the dangers of that theory, 
as it was propounded in Germany in the beginning of this century by men 
such as Oken, Schelling, and others, and I have always considered it a mere 
abuse of it, if its apostles went back to the Heraklitean doctrine of iravra pel 
(all things are in flux), and ignored or denied the existence of any broad lines, 
or fixed steps or stages, if I may say so, in the evolution of nature as well as 
of mind. _ If there were no such lines or limits, it seems to me that the theory 
of evolution, instead of explaining the origin of species, would necessarily lead 
to a denial of all species; nay, it would consign the very concept of species 
as well as of genus to the limbo of mythology." — F. Max Muller, in The Science 
of Thought. 

194 



The World as Intention 

because of the mystery and complexity of relations 
involved in any organic phenomenon, the exact value 
and class of the variations noted may not be discern- 
ible, and, further, potential and factual variation may 
interblend in the same subject and escape correct dis- 
crimination. Potential variation is conditioned on 
factual variation, and where a form is intentionally 
intrinsically made there may be ushered in a wide 
range of possible — potential — variations. The doc- 
trine asserts that those variations which directly aid 
the first intention, the production of the widest and 
highest life, are creatively ordered and immediately 
intentional, and that those which do not do so, unless 
relatively, are mediately intentional and are not 
creatively ordered. For instance, we are quite sure 
that, in this view, the making of man in his physical, 
mental, and psychic life was the first intention, and if 
we could trace a straight line of forms from a pro- 
tozoan to ourselves as the head of the Primates, each 
step in that line would be the result of a factual 
variation, one creatively ordered and immediately in- 
tentional. But the doctrine descries a wide range of 
resistance which has made all such straight linear 
advance impossible and has thrown far to the left and 
right of such a line a vast assemblage of forms from 
the midst of which arises some organic impulse which 
accomplishes a new movement forward toward the 
making of men, while the laterally distributed exer- 
tions of the Intending Mind keep up divergent lines 
of zoological development. In these areas of lateral 

195 



The World as Intention 

productivity and evolution secondary intention and 
potential variation obtain, though it is evident that 
their extent is only presumptive and never accurately 
determinable. Because while the assemblages of 
forms found in all directions remotely removed from 
that special direction along which the first intention is 
concentrated, which direction terminates in the highest 
and widest life, namely, man — while this assemblage 
is very vast and apparently unnecessary, yet its ac- 
cumulated influence may affect not only the fulfillment 
but the perfection of the fulfillment of that first inten- 
tion. How often this has been pointed out! It is a 
very common observation that the variety and abun- 
dance of life, its relations and complexity, were a direct 
means of stimulation for the intellect of man, and 
thereby mediately assisted in his education and im- 
provement; that in a real sense his own perfection or 
development is made dependent upon its existence. 

But there is a reason for this extraordinary and 
apparently wasteful expenditure of force which has 
not been pointed out and which the doctrine con- 
spicuously reveals. It is the dissipation of resistance 
over the widest possible frontiers and territories of 
zoic activity, and for the establishment of a strong 
foundation or substratum of living things upon which 
the subsequent fabrics rest. For the resistance en- 
gaged along these lines will have been drained from 
those central regions where the forms are promulgated 
by factual, ordained, purposeful, immediately inten- 
tional variation, and which forms are the biological 

196 



The World as Intention 

preliminaries to the creation of man. And if drained 
from the metropolis of creative activities the energies 
of advance will be less opposed and the progress there 
more rapid and more distinct. We shall point out 
some confirmation of this further on. 

What we mean is that the profusion of living ob- 
jects in every kingdom of animal or vegetable life, 
inherited from a similar profusion in the past, ap- 
parently has nothing to do with the creation of man 
and the completion of his highest life. But apart from 
the fact that the life of man is immeasurably deepened 
and beautified by this amazing luxuriance it is true 
that by the doctrine of intention, which affirms resist- 
ance because of the length of the process, this very 
resistance is diverted into hosts of narrower and un- 
essential channels which fix the way for the passage 
upward of animal forms at such points as will yield 
them. And at the same time in another aspect of the 
subject these expansions of the lower kingdoms, as 
the polyps, mollusca, articulates, etc., represent the 
diverted currents of intention which are spread far 
and wide over the possible surfaces of life in this world 
because they are dammed back by the exigencies and 
success of resistance, which is again overcome at some 
point when another advance ushers in another critical 
conflict, with the result of another similar retardation 
and another dispersion and series of new forms on a 
higher plane. Further, this profusion in the lower 
orders may, and as we shall show does, arise from the 
fact as well that the ratio of creative force to the 

197 



The World as Intention 

number of forms created is much greater than in the 
higher groups. 

With these remarks, and without at present dwell- 
ing on them or endeavoring to make their drift clearer, 
let us examine some examples, only tentatively offered, 
of potential and factual variation. We have said that 
potential variation represents those capabilities of ad- 
justment which an organism possesses and which are 
latent until summoned to the surface by some irritant 
or influence adequate to evoke them. Thus certain 
caterpillars form chrysalides harmonizing with the 
color of their surroundings. "Mr. Leslie inclosed cer- 
tain caterpillars of one kind in two boxes, one black, 
the other white, and he found that the color of the 
chrysalis in each case harmonized with the color of 
the box. Mr. R. Holland also found the cocoons of 
the emperor moth to be either white or brown, accord- 
ing as they were spun on paper, or amid dead grass, 
or on soil. Mr. E. B. Poulton has ascertained that in 
a large number of larvse of a vanessa butterfly, sur- 
rounded by variously colored papers, the color of 
nearly all the pupae were like, or related to, that of 
the paper about them. He has also found that in five 
species of Lepidoptera the color of the pupa? was in- 
fluenced by the color of their environment which 
surrounded them after they ceased to feed, and this 
even if they were blinded." 1 Changes are induced in 
the plumage of birds by changes in their food. Mr. 
Wallace has shown that some local influence, prevalent 

1 On Truth: A Systematic Inquiry, Saint George Mivart, p. 374- 
I98 



The World as Intention 

in different islands, alters the form and modifies the 
colors of birds and butterflies. A fig tree (Ficus 
stipulata) "grown on a wall has small, thin leaves, and 
clings to the surface like a large moss or a miniature 
ivy. Planted out, it forms a shrub, with large, coarse, 
leathery leaves." 1 "Setters bred at Delhi from care- 
fully paired parents had young with nostrils more 
contracted, noses more pointed, size inferior, and 
limbs more slender than well-bred setters should have. 
Cats at Mombas, on the coast of Africa, have short, 
stiff hairs instead of fur, and a cat from Algoa Bay, 
when left only eight weeks at Mombas, underwent a 
complete metamorphosis — having parted with its 
sandy-colored fur. . . . Nathursius states that pigs 
fed in youth with rich and abundant food acquired 
shorter and broader heads. Mr. Blyth has described 
the turkey in India as being much degenerated in size, 
utterly incapable of rising on the wing, of a black 
color, and with enormously developed, long, pendulous 
appendages over the beak." 

Some very striking observations have been made 
upon the influence of the volume of water upon the 
growth and size of animals. All such fluctuations are 
distinctly to be regarded as potential variations — 
changes induced by varying conditions, elicitations, so 
to speak, of the inherent capabilities of the organism. 
Professor Karl Semper instituted an exhaustive series 
of observations and experiments having in view an 
exact determination of the amount of change in size 

ilbid., p. 377. 
199 



The World as Intention 

of the fresh water snail Lymncca stagnalis, with vary- 
ing quantities of water while "all the conditions of 
existence, and above all the supply of food, were kept 
at the optimum." He says, as the result of his ex- 
amination, that he succeeded, "under conditions of 
existence otherwise identical, in establishing a curve 
of growth for the Lymnsea corresponding to the 
volume of water. This curve shows that the favorable 
effect of an increase of volume of water is highest 
between one hundred and five hundred cubic centi- 
meters for each individual, and that it then gradually 
decreases, till, at five thousand cubic centimeters it 
would seem to cease entirely; that is, an increase of 
volume above this maximum has, as it appears, no 
further effect whatever upon the rapidity of growth. 
Thus the optimism of the volume of water which allows 
the greatest possible length of shell to be attained by 
a Lymnaea within a given time lies approximately be- 
tween four thousand and five thousand cubic centi- 
meters." 1 Finally, it has been shown that it was pos- 
sible to raise a brood of one species of phyllopods 
(Crustacea), Artemia Milhausenii, from a related 
species, A-salina, "by gradually raising the percentage 
of salt" (Semper). Without offering any more illus- 
trations of potential variations, and before discussing 
their relations to factual variations, we must endeavor 
to limit the latter by some intelligible examples. 

Factual variations, as we have suggested, are "such 

1 Animal Life as Affected by the Natural Conditions of Existence (Interna- 
tional Science Series), p. 161. 

200 



The World as Intention 

as represent stringent, exact, specific intentions and 
are instituted with reference to the first intention, 
namely, the creation of life in its widest and highest 
sense," and hence they are seen wherever life advances 
in its functional and structural grade. They are dis- 
covered, we believe, in the embryology of animals. It 
is well known that an organism in its development 
from a germ passes through a series of formative 
phases which culminate in its mature state, and the 
number of these increases with the higher position the 
animal occupies in the scale of living things. Thus 
the stages of growth in a protozoan are reduced to 
barely two, while the successive steps which rise from 
a germ plasm in a mammal to the completed animal 
number ten with intermediate links. But these proc- 
esses of development which we venture to call zo- 
ological formularies are not indefinite in number; 
there are about six of them, and they embrace the 
embryonic life of all the animals known to science. 
Gegenbaur recognizes nine, though some of these can 
be united; they are protozoa (amoeba, etc.), coelen- 
terates (corals, sea pens, anemonse, medusas), vermes 
(worms), echinoderms (sea urchins, starfish, etc.), 
arthropoda (crustaceans, insects), brachiopoda (lamp 
shells), mollusks (oysters, clams, snails), tunicates 
(sea squirts), vertebrata (fish, birds, reptiles, mam- 
mals) ; and he says: "These divisions represent in a 
general way separate branches of the pedigree of 
animals, and each of them contains higher and lower 
forms in various proportion. But the degree and 

201 



The World as Intention 



extent to which their organization is developed is 
different in each of them. The divergence of organi- 
zation expressed in each division is indicated by their 
relations to one another, and it shows us how the 
lower forms of the higher phyla may have started 
from the lower phyla. These large divisions are 
therefore arranged in genealogical connection. The 
extent to which each division is separated from its 
fellows varies in each case. The relation of the 
various large divisions to one another is seen in the 
subjoined tree." 1 



Protozoa - 



Ccelenterates. 

-Mollusks. 



Vermes 



— Tunicates. 
Vertebrates. 



— Arthropoda. 

Brachiopoda. 

Echinodermata. 



These formularies, as Gegenbaur says, are not al- 
ways completed, and as they are or are not they give 
rise to groups of animals serially related to each other 
as higher and lower; the higher in their growth pass 
through the stages at which the lower forms remain 
stationary, so that these lower forms are the larval 
and preparatory conditions of the higher. Thus 
"polyps have always been placed systematically below 
the Medusae; in the development of many Medusas a 
polyplike condition is interposed. The crinoid (Coma- 

1 Elements of Comparative Anatomy, C Gegenbaur, p. 69. 
202 



The World as Intention 

tula), very common in the Mediterranean, is in its 
mature condition freely movable. This definitive 
development is, however, preceded by a sessile stage 
during which the body is attached to a stalk. During 
the larval period the animal resembles the permanently 
sessile genera, which, by all systematic rules, and by 
their geological position, occupy a lower rank in the 
series of echinoderms. The crabs, or anurous Crustacea, 
are raised by sundry characteristics above their long- 
tailed congeners, among which is the fresh-water 
crayfish. In the course of development they pass 
through the long-tailed stage, as is shown in the larva. 
It is by the abortion of the tail, which is employed by 
the long-tailed species as a natatory organ, that they 
become more fitted for running, and some of them for 
terrestrial life, as they are, in a measure, released from 
a burden. One of the systematic series included in the 
Vertebrata leads through the reptiles to the birds. 
. . . Although mammals are never actual fish, there 
is much that is fishlike in the embryonic phases of 
their organs; the embryonic fissures in the thorax 
correspond with the germinal branchial fissures; the 
formation of the brain may be traced to the complete 
brain of the lampreys and the sharks/' 1 But these 
types of development are discovered far back in 
geological time, and they are there found to be in 
process of establishment, the earlier stages of the type, 
whatever one it may be, appearing in the earlier stages 
of the earth's history and advancing along through 

1 The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, O. Schmidt, pp. 56, 57. 
203 



The World as Intention 

geological time upon an ascending path of physiologi- 
cal and structural improvement. The numerous forms 
of the past are all strictly distributed among these 
types ; these forms are the pictorial presentation of the 
type, struggling upward into completion, amid a 
variety of influences, which summoned to the surface 
all their potential variability, and thus illustrated them 
in divergent groups and congeries of related and con- 
trasted species. And this heritage of accumulated 
movements forward along the line of each type has 
been by the law of heredity transmitted to their pres- 
ent descendants and ultimate representatives. The 
embryology of these is the compacted resume of the 
persistency of intention, through the ages of animal 
evolution, to produce higher life. Says Schmidt: 
"The parallelism between the geological succession of 
animals and the grades of the individual development 
of present animals follows as a matter of course. 
Agassiz in his great work on fossil fishes pointed out 
this fact with irresistible force. . . . To express 
this relation Agassiz introduced the term 'embryonic 
types' or 'embryonic representatives.' Thus the 
stalked stone lilies are the embryonic types of the 
present genus Comatula; the most ancient Echinse are 
the embryonic representatives of the higher families 
of the Clypeastrse and Spatangae; the mastodon, on 
account of its persistent molar teeth, is the embryonic 
type of the elephant, which only transitorily possesses 
such teeth." And later Professor Alexander Agassiz 
has said : "The similarity between certain stages in the 

204 



The World as Intention 

growth of young fishes and the fossil representatives 
of extinct members of the group has also been ob- 
served in nearly every class of the animal kingdom, 
and the fact has become a most convenient axiom in 
the study of paleontological and embryological 
development." 1 

Now, the doctrine of intention asserts that the 
variations which ensue in these typical transformations 
are factual variations, prescribed variations, "done on 
purpose," and are related to a fixed and transcendent 
intention. But, as throughout the range of cosmical 
activity, they are effected against the pressure and in- 
fluence of resistance. 

It is impossible to think that they can have arisen 
as "illustrations of the scientific theorem that life 
whether physical or psychical is the continuous ad- 
justment of inner relations to outer relations" (Fiske). 
What a baseless and insubstantial and delusive catch- 
phrase this is, so far as it explains these factual varia- 
tions, will appear at once upon a little reflection. It 
applies very well and is admitted in the case of all 
potential variations and expresses the innate plas- 
ticity of many organisms. But we shall soon point 
out that all potential variability depends on factual 
changes. The adjustment of inner relations to outer 
relations of necessity assumes a system of functions 

1 Address, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section B, 
August, 1880. Of course, the reader must not erroneously infer that the lower 
types are the embryological stages of the higher types. Each type has its own 
life formulary, and the higher orders in each type only develop or grow through 
phases which are the adult states of the lower orders in that type. A mammal's 
germ in its foetal growth is not successively a ccelenterate, an echinoderm, a 
crustacean, and a mollusk. 

205 



The World as Intention 

adjusting itself, and it fails to throw any light on the 
origin of that system, and it is helpless before the 
inquiry why there are now but six such systems, and 
why amid the multifarious and infinite gradations of 
all the eternal factors, which it assumes makes life, 
there have only been six. It is true that the ordinal 
groups now extant embrace all the life that we can 
ever know. Says Professor Boyd Dawkins: "The 
species, genera, and families present an almost endless 
series of changes, but the existing orders are for the 
most part sufficiently wide, and include the vast series 
of fossils, without the necessity of framing new divi- 
sions for their reception." 1 Variation has produced 
this wide sea of forms, but it is a logical concession 
that it has been variations under control, and if it has 
been a variation under control it is simply a verbal 
jugglery that obscures the fact by a multiplication of 
"incident forces" and polarized "physiological units." 
This assumption makes the facts no clearer. 

There are two laws that further illustrate factual, 
directly intentional, variation. They are the law of 
heredity and the law of correlation. The first is its 
record, the impression in nature of an unalterable 
intention, and the language of evolutionary physiology 
expresses the same idea. Says Spencer (Principles of 
Biology), "We must conclude that the likeness of any 
organism to either parent is conveyed by the special 
tendencies of the physiological units derived from that 

1 Address, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section C, 
Geology, 1888, Nature, vol. xxxviii, p. 450. 

206 



The World as Intention 

parent/' but these "special tendencies" can be nothing 
but the derivatives of the factual variations that pre- 
ceded them, and thus by heredity the embryology of 
an animal displays the successional stages of develop- 
ment the type it belongs to has undergone, which 
stages can only, as we have seen, be regarded as in- 
tentional. 1 It is true that potential variations — adap- 
tations, sports, peculiarities, etc. — become inherited 
but more readily as they coincide with the course and 
purpose of factual variations, the plan and sense of 
their type. This must be, for potential variation can 
only be between the limits of differentiation allowed 
by the type, and those limits must always be within 
the type and the less eccentric the variation the 
more probably preserved, unless so weakly devel- 
oped as to be quickly absorbed by the normal form. 
Darwin in his wonderful collection of facts on varia- 
tion shows that remarkable variations are readily 
rendered persistent, but gross contradictions of 
design in any animal form soon disappear. Col- 
onel Hallam's race of two-legged pigs vanished 
in the third generation; the "porcupine man" 
transmitted his callous excrescences to his grandsons 
but no farther; absence of the iris in the eye and cleft 
iris are inherited, but not for many generations. That 
potential variations are always more or less inheritable 
in reality goes to establish our assertion, involved in 
the doctrine, that all potential changes are conditioned 



1 For a brief notice of the interesting, and we think corroborative, views of 
the American Neo-Lamarckians see note at end of this chapter. 

207 



The World as Intention 

on factual variation and have some intrinsic reference 
to it. 1 

If heredity records factual variation, the second 
law, that of correlation, reveals it. This law has been 
expressed in these words : "Every departure from the 
parental form of any given part of an animal or plant 
is accompanied by a definitely correlated and often a 
commensurate departure in other parts remote from 
it." Darwin illustrating it says : "Hairless dogs have 
imperfect teeth; long-haired and coarse-haired ani- 
mals are apt to have, as is asserted, long or many 
horns; pigeons with feathered feet have skin between 
their outer toes; pigeons with short beaks have small 
feet, and those with long beaks large feet." These 
simultaneous accompaniments prove a connectivity in 
the elements of an organism, a plan, and correlation 
understood in the largest sense refers to type. An 
animal with a quadrate bone in the jaw has a long 
vertebrated flexible body and no limbs — it is a serpent 
or true reptile; one with a serial string of similar 
body-rings or somites is an articulate embracing the 
Crustacea and insects ; a double tube with a body cavity 
with or without separation from the tube walls is a 
ccelenterate, etc. It is an instructive fact that these 
correlative associations become more striking as we 
rise in the scale of animal life, so that among mammals, 
as the great Cuvier first divined, the teeth form an 
index of the character of the body, a universal associa- 

1 We may note that the remarkable facts of reversion, and the nisus forma- 
tivus are only further illustrations of the imperativeness and insuperable in- 
sistency of factual variations, manifested through heredity. 

208 



The World as Intention 

tion existing between cutting teeth and carnivorous 
mammals and molars or grinders with graminivorous, 
while far more specific separations are obtained by 
the exact dental formulae. These indissoluble simul- 
taneities publish factual variation, variation made 
with a set purpose in a line of consecutive harmonious 
conceptions. The relations between factual and 
potential variations are these: Potential variations 
represent the plasticity and adaptability of factual 
variations, and every factual variation is accompanied 
by or implies a wide range of possible variability. It 
is these potential variations which natural selection 
seizes and preserves as they are profitable for the 
organism's existence, but all such variations are 
extrinsic modifications of the imbedded form factually 
existent in the varying types. It is the action of 
potential variability that gives the world its abundance 
of life in species. Many genera and possibly some spe- 
cies may represent factual variations in so far as they 
exemplify the advance of the type, as thrushes in birds 
over penguins or water fowl, short-tailed over long- 
tailed crustaceans, anemones and coral polyps over 
hydrozoans, placental over nonplacental mammals, 
pulmoniferous or air-breathing over water-breathing 
mollusks, pulmonate or deciduous branchiate over 
water-breathing or perenni-branchiate amphibians. 
The allied genera, those presenting similar factual 
variations, a similar embryology and root character, 
are gathered together by systematists into kingdoms 
which display the doctrine of intention as revealed in 

209 



The World as Intention 

six types of life, which remain immutable in idea 
though extravagantly and infinitely expanded and 
diversified through potential variation in form. 

Natural selection does not explain factual variation, 
because it cannot show that the kingdoms of life have 
originated from each other by a series of survivals, 
inasmuch as all survive, and inasmuch as the structural 
plan of each diverges from the rest, except on the 
germinal area whence all emerge, before any conflict 
or competition could have arisen between them. 
Natural selection employs the laws of heredity and 
correlation, which are themselves exponents of inten- 
tion. It does not explain potential variations, but only 
the perpetuation of these when profitable, and, as we 
pointed out in the last chapter, as far as the facts go 
they show that profitable variations survive, and 
therefore are profitable because they maintain or ad- 
vance life (the facts of degeneration excepted), and 
life ex hypothesi in the intention of the world. 1 To 
make our progress in this section more rapid and in- 
telligible we will very briefly recall the conclusions we 
have reached. 

We have concluded that life is a creatively assigned 
property of organized matter ; that life is the intention 
of the world; that its propagation has been resisted, 
if intentionally, because of its goal, the highest and 
widest and deepest life; that in overcoming resistance 

1 It might be regarded as a confirmation of this view that injuries, diseases, 
"pathological states," unless congenital, are not inherited. Dr. August Weiss- 
mann has demonstrated the transient effects of any lesion and its usual limi- 
tation to the subject. See Nature, vol. xl, p. 303; and for Dr. C Pitfield 
Mitchell's commentaries upon this, Nature, vol. xl, p. 392. 

2IO 



The World as Intention 

multitudinous lines of living things have arisen 
through deflection and through necessity; that this 
resistance is circumstantial and intentional; that both 
are met by variation; and that variation is potential 
and factual, potential as mainly the correspondence 
evolved between the organism and its environment, 
factual as mainly the preformed type and its mode of 
growth in which "lies the potentiality of a certain 
grade of perfection" (Schmidt). We saw that poten- 
tial variation depended on factual variation as all the 
possible diversifications of a mountain range depend 
on the initial elevation ; that both were intentional, but 
the latter specifically, the former generally and per- 
missively. We saw that natural selection acted on all 
variations, mediately or factual, immediately on 
potential variations, but that it originated neither. 
We claimed that the laws of heredity and correlation 
were conscripted under the intention of factual varia- 
tions and were part of it, and everywhere we admitted 
the theory of descent. 

We are now ready to turn to the history of life in 
the world and observe how it expresses intention, 
conforms to the law of intention, and displays 
resistance. 

One word first upon the attempt made by Spencer 
in his Biology to explain variation by the blind action 
of "incident forces" on the differing polarities of his 
"physiological units." We need hardly stop to discuss 
this because whatever coherence or intelligibility it 
can have arises from his supporting assumption of a 

211 



The World as Intention 

"persistent force." He says (chap, ix, sec. 91) : 
"Passing from these derivative laws to the ultimate 
law, we see that variation is necessitated by the 
persistence of force." But a persistent force cannot 
inaugurate a distinctly unified movement toward an 
object by a system of circumscribed mechanism with- 
out intelligence. As Paley has said, "Intelligence 
must come in somewhere," even if it appear in minute 
quantities and in an unsatisfactory form. And it has 
been truly remarked that Spencer's hypothesis of. 
instability in a homogeneous universe supplies "no 
principle of action, but merely means a state in which, 
equilibrium being very delicate, a very slight external 
force is enough to disturb it" (Dr. Gasquet quoted 
by Mivart). 

Let us now examine very quickly the geological 
record. The course of organic evolution in the records 
of paleontology expresses an intention slowly accom- 
plishing its purpose under resistance, and conforms, 
in the phenomena it presents, to the conception of a 
mind pursuing an objective purpose with an accel- 
erated motion as that purpose was approached (see 
article VI, Chapter I). For what is that record of 
extinct life? From the first primordial scintillations 
of life in the Cambrian era to the last contributions 
of zoic energy in the Tertiaries we see a succession 
of ascending stages of life, a series of zoological plat- 
forms which are linked together by a stairway of 
organisms passing from one to the next and separated 
by a disappearance of forms which never reappear. 

212 



The World as Intention 

Resistance is periodically overcome, but by it the in- 
tention, of a Supreme Mind, to produce the highest 
and widest and deepest life is forced into a consecutive 
display of creative energy. In the earlier ages — the 
Paleozoic — the invertebrates appear in great numbers, 
and the lower orders of plants and the preparatory 
groups of the vertebrates force their prophetic out- 
lines in view. And these vertebrates and plants begin 
in more generalized forms and advance to the more 
specialized, which are the higher. As the intention is 
to embrace higher zoological and structural ideas, this 
again publishes resistance and its gradual repulse. 
These periodic floodings or gushes of forms of life, 
as the brachiopods in the Silurian, trilobites in the 
Upper Potsdam and Crustacea in modern seas, the 
lamellibranchs in the Devonian, the crinoids in the 
Lower Carboniferous, the echinoids in the Cretaceous, 
the cephalopods and reptilia in the Jurassic, the 
gasteropods and mammals in the Tertiaries, are the 
wide escape of a propulsive intention as it overcomes 
resistance, which it has undermined or repelled by 
processes of development slowly and unintermittently 
inaugurated long before. Premonitions of these out- 
bursts are found before they come, in the genera and 
orders of the preceding eras. So striking is this that 
it has led M. Naudin, a French naturalist, with no 
theological hobbies or convictions, to propound, on 
the evidence, the analogous idea that a "force of 
variation or origination of forms has acted rhythmi- 
cally or intermittently, because each movement was 

2T 3 



The World as Intention 

the result of the rupture of an equilibrium, the libera- 
tion of a force which till then was retained in a 
potential state by some opposing force or obstacle, 
overcoming which it passes to a new equilibrium, 
and so on. Hence ... of dynamic activity and 
static repose, of origination of species and types, 
alternated with periods of stability or fixity. The 
timepiece does not run down regularly, but, la force 
procede par saccades; et . . . par pulsations 
d'autant plus energiques que la nature etait plus pres 
de son commencement." 1 

Now, it is a remarkable circumstance, strengthening 
the doctrine we are unfolding, that the vast length of 
time involved in the progress of the Paleozoic ages 
was employed in establishing the kingdoms of inver- 
tebrate life, and that as at its close the vertebrate type 
was reached, in which resided the potential power of 
the highest development, the supreme intention rose 
swiftly to its object — man, his powers and destiny. 
Resistance accumulated against the flow of that inten- 
tion, and by an intelligent obstruction attempted to 
close its exit into the pregnant channel of vertebrate 
forms, but was slowly dissipated through the prolific 
avenues of invertebrate life. And the intending mind 
having ushered in the vertebrates thence proceeds with 
rapidity through its evolving phases, still overcoming, 
at each ascension, the inextricable resistance, to com- 
plete its organic purpose, creating man, and pushing 



1 Darwiniana, Asa Gray, p. 350. See Annales des Science Naturelle, 1876, 
pp. 73-81. 

214 



The World as Intention 

in upon the world's stage the vast psychic conse- 
quences of this supreme result. For what are the 
facts ? The period in length from the Archaean to the 
Mesozoic, when the vertebrates begin to assume pre- 
dominance, is according to Dana represented by 
twelve, and the interval from the beginning of the 
Mesozoic to the arrival of man, or the remainder of 
paleontological time, by four. In this latter compara- 
tively short period the scheme and census of the verte- 
brates were completed. Professor Boyd Dawkins 
says : "The general impression left upon my mind by 
these facts is that, while all the rest of the animal 
kingdom had ceased to present important modifica- 
tions at the close of the Secondary period, the Mam- 
malia, which presented no great changes in the 
Secondary rocks, were, to quote a happy phrase of 
Professor Gaudry 'en pleine evolution' in the Tertiary 
age." He further says : "The number of extinct 
orders is not equally distributed through the animal 
kingdom. Taking the total number of orders at one 
hundred and eight, the number of extinct orders in 
the Invertebrata amounts only to six out of eighty- 
eight, or about seven per cent ; while in the Vertebrates 
it is not less than twelve out of forty, or thirty per 
cent. These figures imply that the amount of ordinal 
change in the fossil Vertebrates stands to that in the 
Invertebrates in the ratio of thirty to seven. This dis- 
proportion becomes still more marked when we take 
into account that the former had less time for variation 
than the latter, which had the start by the Cambrian 

215 



The World as Intention 

and Ordovician periods. It follows also that as a 
whole they have changed faster." 1 

Now, this interesting and illuminative result can- 
not be wholly explained upon the supposition of fit 
and unfit conditions. The seas of the Trenton period 
in the Lower Silurian were quite as well adapted for 
fish life as those of the Devonian, so far as we can 
infer from their remains, and wide areas in the 
Carboniferous could have supported mammalian life, 
if the presumption, which is now being modified and 
virtually abandoned, that the atmosphere was exces- 
sively irrespirable, on account of the quantity of car- 
bonic anhydride it contained, is rejected. And it 
seems quite certain that no variations in the climatic 
or terrestrial conditions of the Tertiaries explains the 
swift advance and development in all their divisions 
and families of the mammalia. An intention which 
had overcome a long resident resistance — a resistance 
also truly intentional as well as circumstantial — had 
at length introduced by factual variation the mamma- 
lian type and passed along this direct line with celerity 
and pleasure, to the predesigned outcome of all its 
application, contrivance, and approach — man. 

It is unnecessary, and would introduce a tiresome 
prolixity, to apply the thoughts suggested by the doc- 
trine of intention to paleontological facts, curious as 
such a study might prove, but there are two facts 
which exemplify its value. 

1 Since the above sentence was written fish remains have been discovered in 
the Lower Silurian beds of Arkansas, and will be described by C. D. Walcott, 
of the United States Geological Survey. 

216 



The World as Intention 

The first fact is the far greater extension of species 
in the lower orders than in the higher, the actual 
majority of forms, the continually decreasing differen- 
tiations as we enter the higher types. The reason, by 
the doctrine, is furnished first by the consideration that 
as the end of the intentional process was reached 
factual designed variations were more numerous rela- 
tively to the possibility of potential variations, the 
process became intensified and restricted, the propul- 
sive exertion of design became more limited and de- 
fined and allowed less and less amplitudes of oscilla- 
tion as it approached its object; or, to illustrate it by 
an image, which we hope will not be misunderstood 
or regarded literally, as a traveler from his wandering 
and ambiguous approach to his destination, at the 
outset, straightens his course and becomes intent upon 
his economies of distance as he sees and feels his goal. 
The second reflection applied to this fact is that 
though the direction of intention becomes more and 
more obvious in the higher vertebrates resistance is 
also relatively more concentrated, more intense, and 
obstinate, while it is more diffused in the lower orders, 
and the Supreme Mind imparting a creative stimulus 
to matter in these latter the impact or push is carried 
along further in them, as a shove to a car on a friction- 
less track carries it farther than the same shove to 
either a larger car or to the same car upon a rough- 
ened surface. These two thoughts are not to be 
separated nor opposed. They have a distinct corela- 
tionship. Neither are they fanciful. 

217 



The World as Intention 

The second fact is the disappearance of species, 
which M. Naudin has attributed to a dying out force. 
"M. Naudin contends that most of the extinct species 
have died a natural death from exhaustion of 
force, and that all the survivors are on the way 
to it. The great timepiece of nature was wound 
up at the beginning and is running down" (Asa 
Gray). This is an unworthy and useless concep- 
tion, but the process it attempts to explain is going 
on to-day. Dr. Gray writes: "A multitude of forms 
have disappeared already, and the number of species, 
far from increasing, as some have believed, must, on 
the contrary, be diminishing." This abandonment of 
species and contraction of the areas of life marks, in 
the doctrine we are elaborating, the secular rise of 
intention. By this we mean the periodic lifting of 
the plane upon which intention acts so that its active 
sentient purpose is being pursued upon successively 
higher levels, and the regions no longer animated by 
it are occupied solely by the residual force it has gen- 
erated or applied there. This, at length, dissipated by 
resistance, slowly comes to rest, and the decadence and 
disappearance of families, genera, and species of ani- 
mals or plants distinguish its gradual retardation and 
stoppage. Throughout the geological history of the 
world the succession of higher forms in later periods 
accompanies the disappearance of lower forms in 
earlier periods, 1 and to-day by the application of this 

1 The little brachiopod shell Lingula is an exception to this rule ; it is found 
preserved as a fossil in the Potsdam Sandstone at the base of the geological 
series, and it is found (differing in species) in the present seas. Whether it 

218 



The World as Intention 

law in the doctrine of intention we are led to the sug- 
gestive conclusion that animal life is no longer, or is 
decreasingly, manifesting the Supreme Mind, which, 
carrying its intention upward, is probably passing into 
the plane of psychic phenomena as representing the 
highest, widest, and deepest life. There is, indeed, a 
dying out force, but it is not because the initial power 
has forgot or neglected or parted with its prerogatives 
and purpose. It is because that power, ascending, 
against resistance, to its supreme end, imperceptibly 
through the process of centuries, withdraws from the 
first theaters of its activity, and its secular rise is at- 
tended and illustrated by expended and obsolete forms 
of life. The track of intention is a trail thickly 
strewn with extinct species, but it ever rises until we 
find it regnant upon the human plane, and even there, 
passing still upward through the phalanxes of men, it 
advances from the prehistoric savage through the 
phases of civilization to the truest and fairest products 
of religious thought. 

Thus the doctrine of intention assimilates and re- 
produces the processes of evolution, but it perpetually 
fills the shifting scenes of progress with the genius of 
a designing mind. 

If the secular rise of intention has brought intention 
— in other words, the intending action of the Supreme 
Mind — up to psychic levels, and therefore beyond the 



possesses a wide adaptability or not, or because its straightened requirements 
enable it to find favorable conditions in all periods of the world's physical 
mutations, it, at any rate, presents an unusual stability and illustrates an 
organic nucleus of inflexible endurance and resoluteness. 

219 



The World as Intention 

administration of zoological provinces simply, we 
would have an explanation why to-day we never see 
any zoological advance, any member progressively 
added to the catalogue of living things. The concep- 
tual scale of structural ascension is completed, and the 
ulterior stations of intention have become solely 
spiritual conditions, or are placed outside of our world. 
Potential variations may yet play an active part and 
add extensively to the zoic diversity of the earth, but 
factual, designed changes have ceased. For it ap- 
pears to us that such factual variations must appear, 
as Mivart has said, "with suddenness and by modifi- 
cations appearing but once"; at least, such abrupt 
alterations are presupposed by the doctrine of inten- 
tion. We certainly see nothing of the kind to-day, 
and the law of the secular rise of intention explains 
why this is so. But paleontology does indicate that such 
sudden apparitions of new forms have taken place in 
the past, and in unison with the steps of a "slow and 
gradual evolution," and that these new formulative or 
typical beings bore within themselves a vast dowry of 
differentiable forms which by processes more strictly 
natural were evolved around some such denominative 
center. 

Further, the rigid logical conclusions drawn from 
the secular rise of intention, so far as they involve 
practical considerations, may seem singular. They 
would, of course, discountenance all efforts looking 
toward the enlightenment or improvement of wild 
races, as attempts to complete an intrinsically incom- 

220 



The World as Intention 

plete organism, which, being from the nature of the 
case preliminary to the erection of the finished Homo 
sapiens, is simply provisional and expedient. In the 
march of forms toward the highest life by resistance 
these races have arisen as introductory to the repre- 
sentatives of that life, wherever or whenever the latter 
may arrive. As they therefore stand for an expunged 
or translated intention it would appear that efforts to 
improve them are acts of supererogation, as, having 
been abandoned at fixed points of delimitation, they 
cannot be raised beyond it. Or, if they can be de- 
veloped, informed, and carried on to higher stages of 
culture, then they are examples of lapsed intention, 
they have declined from a pristine excellence, or at 
least some higher condition, into which a renewal of 
formative processes — mental and physical — can re- 
place them. This opens a rather wide discussion, but 
we believe a profound understanding of the doctrine 
of intention throws light on the dispute as to whether 
the wild tribes distributed over the world outside of 
the metropoles of intellectual activity are imperfect 
or degenerated forms. Into such a discussion it is 
unnecessary to enter; its treatment is suggested only 
by all the foregoing chapter, its statements and 
implications. 

We wish now to explain in the doctrine of intention 
the principle of defectivity, one of its most important 
elements. 

Intention is the mark and measure of resistance (see 
articles, Chapter I), and the principle of defectivity 

221 



The World as Intention 

publishes the defeat of intention. It marks the exclu- 
sion of the ideal, the failure of exact contact between 
desire and realization. Nothing is better known in 
the common world of action. But the intention of the 
world is life in its highest, best, deepest, widest sense, 
and not only is that life not found here, but the innu- 
merable steps up to it through the vegetable and 
animal world are marred by defectivity, by imperfec- 
tions and drawbacks. The intention succeeds, and its 
success is marvelous and engaging, but it does not 
succeed without sacrifice, without strain and perver- 
sion. The principle of defectivity is apparent through- 
out the world. It has been pointed out by philoso- 
phers and naturalists. Saint George Mivart says : "The 
world not only suffers, but has suffered for millions of 
years ere man was. For untold ages bloodthirsty 
rapine has raged and reigned, and cries of pain, due 
to cruel wounds and to limbs crushed in bloodstained 
jaws, have continually resounded in the only one of 
God's worlds we are able to know and understand. 
The very existence of many creatures is bound up 
with the sufferings of others, and parasites, external 
and internal, torture their helpless and involuntary 
hosts, by means of implements carefully contrived for 
securing their hold and aiding their progress." The 
principle of defectivity in the world of mind and 
morals is obvious and understood. It is recorded in 
the stock lamentations of every misanthrope and 
justifies the harsh sarcasm of the cynic. The arch 
pessimist Ewald Hartmann says: "If, then, we put 

222 



The World as Intention 

together the general and special considerations there 
emerges the undoubted result that at present pain not 
only preponderates in the world in general, to a high 
degree, but also in each single individual, even him 
who is placed in the most favorable circumstances 
conceivable." He quotes Plato, Fichte, Schelling, 
Kant, Schopenhauer, to sustain this, and impeaches 
the claims of health, youth, competency, love, friend- 
ship, ambition, religion, science, art, passion, to make 
life desirable. 

The marvels of organic adaptation can be structur- 
ally improved, and the felicities of mental and moral 
progress are purchased by losses, wounds, and faint- 
ness. The eye has been found fault with, and Darwin 
quotes these words of Helmholtz: "That which we 
have discovered in the way of inexactness and im- 
perfection in the optical machine and in the image on 
the retina is as nothing in comparison with the in- 
congruities which we have just come across in the 
domain of the sensations. One might say that nature 
has taken delight in accumulating contradictions in 
order to remove all foundation from the theory of a 
preexisting harmony between the external and in- 
ternal worlds." Darwin exposes the weakness of the 
bee's sting. He says : "Can we consider the sting of 
the bee as perfect, which, when used against many 
kinds of enemies, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the 
backward serratures, and thus inevitably causes the 
death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?" 

Defectivity is the essential consequence of intention 
223 



The World as Intention 

working against resistance — because resistance, if it 
is resistance at all, must overcome something in the 
very process of being itself overcome, and deflection 
or retardation or some impairment of intensity and 
form is an absolutely inevitable result. Resistance 
cancels something, and though the moral grandeur of 
effects is heightened by their attainment through 
effort, and the educational results in men and women 
beneficial, yet the perfection, the flawless and exquisite 
outline, of the products seems dulled or broken or de- 
faced when resistance has obstructed and modified 
execution, and robbed the instantaneity of the ideal 
conception of something of its freshness, its vigor, 
and its beauty. 

There is so much in nature that seems roundabout 
and provisional; there is the awkward and parsi- 
monious mechanism of the lower Crustacea, the ugli- 
ness and helplessness of annelids (worms), the dis- 
symmetrical and aimless construction of cystideans, 
the catalepsy and hideousness of some fishes, the far- 
fetched and bizarre distortion in orchids, the distrait 
wretchedness of sloths, the unfinished cumbrousness 
and pathos of elephants, the niggardliness in outfit of 
the monotremata, and the ludicrous and larval con- 
ceit of the marsupials. Nature neither in her appear- 
ance nor in her designs nor in her ends seems alto- 
gether good or altogether wise. She is here and there 
fatigued or outwitted, and the mingled currents of 
her children betray a heritage of infirmities, as well as 
of glorious powers. Nature is the distinct result of 

224 



The World as Intention 

war. Now, the principle of defectivity is explained 
and rendered luminous and hopeful upon the basis of 
the doctrine of intention we are here unfolding, and 
it is left unexplained and baffling upon any other 
system of teleology. The whole principle of defec- 
tivity is also involved in the fact of "rudimentary 
organs," in which Dr. Haeckel and others so clearly 
beheld the overthrow of the usual argument of final 
causes that he has made them the theme of a new 
philosophy— dysteleology or antiteleology. He says: 
"When the teleological and thereby dualistic biology 
had in our day commonly asserted, and until Darwin 
continued to assert without contradiction, that the 
morphological phenomena in the animal and vegetable 
world were 'designed adjustments/ that they were 
prepared and devised after a 'designed plan/ and were 
fixed by 'designed causes' (causae finales), this radi- 
cally wrong view, apart from its untenableness, by 
nothing was more crushingly overthrown than by 
rudimentary organs, which are either entirely indif- 
ferent and useless or else absolutely purposeless/ n 
Such rudimentary organs are the embryonic teeth in 
calves, in the young of baleen whales, the wing ele- 
ments in the apteryx, mammae in male mammals, 
papillae representing pistils in flowers, pelvis and hind 
limbs in the boa, the single lung in snakes with its 
rudimentary companion, the nails on a manatee, etc. 
These organs may be nascent, that is, on the way to 
further development, or they may be dec adent, on the 

1 Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, vol. ii, p. 259. 
225 



The World as Intention 

way to complete extinction, but in either case they are 
as striking indicators of struggle as they are of 
descent. Now, it seems evident that an intention to 
produce life and to embody its specific qualities and 
traits in perfect forms would not, if guided by the 
highest intelligence and the deepest morality, deface 
or burden its results with useless characteristics, 
which, besides their interference and draining effects, 
obscure the didactic aspect of nature and raise confu- 
sion and denial. Such disfigurements, which may 
practically be of no consequence, are related to re- 
sistance, not as being themselves antagonistic or 
hurtful, but as the correlated consequences of a system 
of creation working against resistance. 

Furthermore, to illustrate the relation of the prin- 
ciple of defectivity to the doctrine of intention, we 
would point out the fact that as any form of life ap- 
proaches the perfection of its form in the highest 
ranges of its genera the defective aspects of that life 
decrease. Naturally, the intention is releasing itself 
from resistance, and its purpose becomes clearer and 
its message more expressive, harmonious, and worthy. 
Man as a morphological product expresses the purpose 
of intention in the vertebrate type more significantly 
and keenly than does a hyena or a horse, and probably 
something higher than man, or man himself exalted, 
expresses the purpose of intention in an ethical sense 
and form. So the helpful conclusion is reached that 
the highest forms of life correspond most closely to 
the supreme intention, and that it is in the larval and 

226 



The World as Intention 

preparatory stages that the principle of defectivity is 
more evident as the result of an entangling conflict 
between intention and resistance. How many em- 
barrassments, which are brought upon the teleological 
apologist, are removed by this position! 

Finally, we wish to show that this resistance is 
in a measure intentional. We know it to be circum- 
stantial, and we have said that both intentional and 
circumstantial resistance have been met by variation, 
and we have discussed briefly the classes of variation 
as factual and potential. The resistance to an inten- 
tion to produce life is an intention to curtail or destroy 
life, and we have suggested that the material means 
employed, as in itself the negation of life, and as in its 
establishment the source of weakness, is sterility. 
Now, in the discussion of resistance in Chapter I, 
wherein we formed rules of investigation as to inten- 
tional and circumstantial resistances, we defined one 
method as that of "counter intention," and prepared 
these directions : "Observe whether resistances to an 
intention cease upon the abandonment of the intention, 
or whether an action is set up which continues until a 
result is brought about which is the opposite of the 
intention." This was illustrated by the homely in- 
stance of a heavy door against which a man has been 
pushing swinging inward against him upon the re- 
linquishment of his own efforts to push it from him, 
the door and its surroundings being devoid of any 
mechanical adjustments which would effect this. The 
very natural conclusion in such an occurrence would 

227 



The World as Intention 

be that some one was pushing in an opposite direction 
on the other side. There is a class of facts in nature 
which seems to correspond with this reactionary push. 
They belong to those interesting phenomena desig- 
nated by naturalists under the name of "degeneration," 
and sometimes as "retrogressive metamorphosis/' It 
has been defined by a thoroughgoing Darwinist, Dr. 
E. Ray Lankester, in these words : "Degeneration may 
be defined as a gradual change of the structure in 
which the organism becomes adapted to less varied and 
less complex conditions of life; while elaboration is a 
gradual change of structure in which the organism 
becomes adapted to more and more varied and com- 
plex conditions of existence. In elaboration there is 
a new expression of form, corresponding to new per- 
fection of work in the animal machine. In degenera- 
tion there is suppression of form, corresponding to the 
cessation of work. Elaboration of some one organ 
may be a necessary accompaniment of degeneration 
in all the others; in fact, this is very generally the 
case ; and it is only when the total result of the elabora- 
tion of some organs, and the degeneration of others, 
is such as to leave the whole animal in a lower condi- 
tion, that is, fitted to less complex action and reaction 
in regard to its surroundings, than was the ancestral 
form with which we are comparing it (either actually 
or in imagination), that we speak of that animal as an 
instance of degeneration." 1 This is seen in the horse 
mite, which is a degenerate spider, and which in its 

1 Degeneration, E. Ray Lankester, Nature Series, p. 32. 
228 



The World as Intention 

parasitic state has lost in great part its former legs, 
and become saclike, needing in its quiescent existence 
only an instrument for perforation and the necessary 
organs of suction. So also the Demodex folliculoritm, 
which becomes ensconced in the skin follicles of the 
human subject and sinks into a swollen receptacle of 
the fluids of its host. Ascidians are regarded by some 
naturalists as degenerate vertebrates, as their prelim- 
inary stages are almost identical with those of the 
frog — the tadpole stage — and they exhibit a slow de- 
cline in structure by the absorption and retrogressive 
metamorphosis of these higher elements as they as- 
sume the fixed and relatively inferior position of 
motionless bodies deriving their food from the cur- 
rents of the sea. Again, there are certain shrimps 
which start with the phase known as the nauplius; 
"but while the nauplius of the free-living shrimp grows 
more and more elaborate, observe what happens to 
the parasites — they degenerate into comparatively 
simple bodies; and this is true of their internal 
structure as well as of their external appearance. The 
most utterly reduced of these parasites is the curious 
sacculina which infests hermit crabs, and is a mere 
sac filled with eggs, and absorbs nourishment from the 
juices of its host by rootlike processes" (Lankester). 
Dr. Lankester perceives a wide field of application for 
the process of degeneration; and seems inclined to 
regard the sponges, the coral animals, the starfishes, 
the clams, mussels, and oysters, and polyzoa (sea- 
mats, etc.) as possible results of its action; the phases 

229 



The World as Intention 

of change being lost, and the last stage of deteriora- 
tion becoming fixed, unaccompanied at present by any 
evidence of the state it has lapsed from, or of the 
intermediate stations which preceded it. 

These examples of degeneration are examples of 
counter intention and publish intentional resistance. 
These animal units provided with a certain combina- 
tion of parts which give them position in the animal 
scale are no longer maintained in that position by any 
factual control on the part of the intending mind, and 
they should on the hypothesis of indifferentism remain 
where the intending mind left them. But they do not. 
They sink away from their technical position and sub- 
side into lower conditions as the result of the action 
of an intention to degrade and obliterate them. It is 
the precise analogue of the heavy door from which 
the visible agent who was pushing it from him has 
withdrawn, only to see it move toward him in an 
opposite direction to his own exertions. 

It will be at once objected that the protean applica- 
bility or adaptability of natural selection explains 
degeneration quite as well as it explains any other 
series of organic changes. The variations which ensue 
in the process of degeneration are all themselves 
profitable, and conduce toward the better perpetuity 
of the species; the loss of unnecessary parts and the 
modification of others in relation to the new functions 
of the animal are all distinguishing features of 
Lamarckian Darwinism. To see in degeneration the 
purpose of a mind inimical to the law of advance, im- 

230 



The World as Intention 

provement, and life is to return to mystical methods 
of thought, and to attempt to rehabilitate a spiritual 
interpretation of natural phenomena which is foolish, 
obstructive, and ignorant. We do not think so. The 
action of natural selection remains vivid and real in 
the world when we assume a supreme intention and 
factual and potential variations as its instrumentalities, 
while on this latter assumption we are relieved from 
the embarrassment caused by the evident inadequacy 
of natural selection to explain the world as we know 
it. All this we have reviewed in the preceding pages. 
Now, in the same way it appears that whereas de- 
generation can be superficially regarded as an ulti- 
mate consequence of use and disuse, and that those 
organisms which assume a parasitic existence or 
which reach a lower, less complex order of life are 
benefited by discharging all such members or functions 
which, not being employed under these conditions, 
are in the way or drain the system to an injurious 
degree for their support — while degeneration may be 
so interpreted, the determining principle which causes 
this retrogression is not revealed. It is not a question 
of weakened or degenerate members, as when my arm, 
through lack of exercise, loses its force and becomes 
shrunken, flaccid, and inert because no flow of nutri- 
ment is by exercise summoned in its direction for the 
repair of waste, but it is a far more difficult question 
why a type of life should lose its characteristic 
features and become obscured or effaced in less noble 
lineaments, as when the vertebrate larva of an 

231 



The World as Intention 

ascidian becomes the sessile motionless sea squirt, or 
the young crustacean is transformed into the juice- 
congested sacculina. 

If, as we have been led to think, the erection of an 
animal type of life is the result of intention, its sub- 
version must be the result of intention also. What- 
ever means bring that subversion about are not to 
be construed as the ultimate explication of the phe- 
nomena or to be substituted in the place of the agency 
which directs them. If the advance of forms requires 
the assumption of direction the recession of forms de- 
mands something like it. And we cannot assume that, 
like a stretched cord, which upon release contracts into 
its smallest dimensions, the elongated succession of 
phases in an animal's development is under tension, 
or tends to return to primordial or to some simpler 
state, unless maintained by circumstances or will, for 
numerous animal forms remain unchanged — in statu 
quo — for ages. It will, then, be asked how these 
forms remain unchanged for ages, in presence of an 
intention adverse to the intention of life which brought 
them into existence, and which has already demon- 
strated its power by the phenomena of degeneration. 
And the answer is that intentional resistance can only 
act by seizing upon potential variations, and of neces- 
sity the manifestation of such variations depends upon 
the circumstances surrounding the animal. The pos- 
sibilities of degeneration are in an organism, and 
when the opportunity for their invocation appears the 
opposing mind by intention brings them forward. 

232 



The World as Intention 

Just as it is possible for a stone on the slope of a hill 
to roll down any hill, but it is by an act of will in the 
shape of a push that it actually rolls down some par- 
ticular hill. Degeneration is carried out by natural 
causes, but the propulsion is ab tergo and ab extra; 
as in evolution or in the advance of living forms 
the agencies, so far as they involve potential varia- 
tions, are called natural, but the incentive is mental. 
Now, we have before claimed that potential varia- 
tions depend and are involved in factual variations. 
But factual variations are the direct expression of 
the intentions of a Supreme Mind. Hence intentional 
resistance by degeneration, acting on potential varia- 
tions, is exercising a permissive function. The con- 
clusion is important: Intentional resistance in the 
world of nature is permissive. Not only does the fact 
of creation bring to light the agency of negation or 
mutilation, but it introduces that agency into its own 
work by its own intention. 

The ethical bearings of such a remarkable state- 
ment will be naturally considered elsewhere. (See 
Conduct and Creed as Intention.) We have taken 
degeneration to prove the presence of intentional 
resistance by the method of counter intention, and 
we have said above that sterility expresses in its 
wide circumference of meanings the results of in- 
tentional resistance. But degeneration is an aspect 
of sterility, for it reduces and degrades life, it induces 
uniformity by which sterility becomes established, and 
it deforms the diversification of life with rude and 

^33 



The World as Intention 

shapeless forms. Along with intentional resistance is 
circumstantial resistance, which together with the 
former disfigures the unfolding of a supreme plan, 
provokes the ruthless conflict for existence, disorders 
the serenity and sweetness of life with disease, and in- 
flicts upon the beauty and flower of youth the inevit- 
able conclusions of death and age. Resistance makes 
the world comprehensible, as the outcome of a divine 
intention moving slowly and with the strain of struggle 
toward its ideal. In the principle of defectivity we 
discern that struggle; in the secular rise of intention 
we anticipate that ideal. The multitudinous com- 
mixture of bad and good, the slowly extricated impulse 
of advancement and its perpetually extended realiza- 
tion, the decadence of animal life, the bewildering 
extension of variations, and the strenuous emphasis of 
types, the panorama and the drama of organic life 
declare intention, and declare it as moving with 
majestic and rhythmical ascension against restraint, 
obstruction, and defacement. And because we have 
observed the facts of actual superinduced change 
(factual variations) we are saved from those vague 
and drowsy propositions which make the world the 
outcome of physical and chemical forces simply, or the 
lethargic motion of a vis optima evolving itself with 
increased satisfaction through eons and eons of time. 

By the doctrine of intention we can avail ourselves 
of everything which science has to offer, while we may 
look upon the organic world with some rational con- 
tentment, and may avoid any point of view which 

234 



The World as Intention 

assumes that "Science opposes, to God, nature, or that 
when it denies God it denies the existence of any 
power beyond or superior to nature; and it may deny 
at the same time anything like a cause of nature." 1 
By the doctrine of intention we are led to believe that 
we are in the midst, and a quota of, a sort of thauma- 
turgic conflict, which, while it makes the study of the 
history of nature sublime and thrilling, adds a new 
intensity and splendor to human acts as possibly 
(Chapter V) extensions of the contest into an arena 
where we as individuals assist or retard the consum- 
mation of the final victory which must terminate the 
struggle. 

NOTE TO CHAPTER III 
The position of the American school of so-called Neo- 
Lamarckians has been well presented by Professor Osborn, of 
Princeton (Nature, vol. xli, p. 227). They hold that the survival 
of the fittest being now demonstrated, "in our present need of 
an explanation of the origin of the fittest, the principle of 
selection is inadequate, and have brought forward and dis- 
cussed the evidence for the inherited modifications produced by 
reactions in the organism itself — in other words, the indirect 
action of environment," and they lay stress upon "the rise of 
useful structures from their minute embryonic, apparently useless, 
condition," the most vulnerable point in the pure selection 
theory. And they find in the development of molar teeth a 
uniform succession of forms not in one but in all phyla which 
they examine, and, "to sum up, the new variations in the 
skeleton and teeth of the fossil series are observed to have a 
definite direction ; in seeking an explanation of this direction, 
we observe that it universally conforms to the reactions pro- 
duced in the individual by the laws of growth ; we infer these 

1 Natural Religion, p. 17. 
235 



The World as Intention 

reactions are transmitted." Professor Osborn well asks, "Even 
if useful new adjustments of elements already existing may- 
arise independently of use, why should the origin of new ele- 
ments conform to this law? Granting the possibility that the 
struggle for existence is so intense that a minute new cusp will 
be selected, if it happens to arise at the right point, where are 
the nonselected new elements, the experimental failures of 
nature? We do not find them?" "If," he continues, "from the 
evident necessity of a working theory of heredity, the onus 
probandi falls upon the Lamarckian — if it be demonstrated that 
this transmission does not take place — then we are driven to 
the necessity of postulating some as yet unknown factor in 
evolution to explain these purposive or directive laws in varia-. 
tion ; for, in this field at least, the old view of the random intro- 
duction and selection of new characters must be abandoned, not 
only upon theoretical grounds, but upon actual observation." 

Whether or not the development of molars involves factual 
variations or not, the above picture is in entire harmony with a 
doctrine of intention in the world. 

236 



CHAPTER IV 

The Bible as Intention 

The relations of the Bible to Indo-European civili- 
zation present a singularly interesting and suggestive 
study. The dependency and weakness of our human 
position seem forcibly illustrated by it on the one 
hand, and the weightiness, dignity, usefulness, and 
beauty of the work itself are exhibited on the other. 
The perennial interest that as children we take in the 
stories of the Bible is the same absorption that we feel 
in De Foe's Robinson Crusoe, qualified and deepened 
by such educational forces as play around and on us 
from the institutes of religious instruction and the 
tenderness of maternal guidance. The perennial in- 
terest that as men we take in the message of the Bible 
is derivative from those unassuaged emotions of 
wonder, curiosity, and longing which this world and 
its events awaken, and which are so keenly invoked, 
excited, and pacified by the gypsy and the medium. 
The Bible has trained and informed the religious life 
of Europe, and it lies to-day imbedded in history, in 
literature, and in the biographies of men and women 
so profoundly that, like a bowlder in the earth which 
anchors numerous plants, whose entwining roots have 
penetrated within its fissures and drawn moisture from 
its interstices, it holds the ingrafted affections of men, 

^37 



The World as Intention 

and has been infolded and entered by the tendrils of 
their thought, and has borne upon its pages the flowers 
of their hopes. 

But we are educated and inclined to regard this 
wonderful monument as something more and better 
than a literary episode or an ethic chronicle, as 
something deeper than a medley of figurative anec- 
dotes or conflicting traditions, as something more 
permanent than a valuable relic of antiquity and a 
hypothetical history of half-legendary events. The 
doctrine of intention regards the Bible as itself an 
intention, and brings its revenue of ideas into the 
discussion of that work, so as to make the attitude of 
catholic Christianity toward it both reverential and in- 
telligent. The Bible should be neither misunderstood 
nor overrated, and those who still hold it as the guide 
of faith should neither be dismayed nor incredulous 
when they hear that "again and again we are sensible, 
as we read, of awkward transitions, of breaks in the 
narrative, of gaps that leave us puzzled, of passages 
unnaturally interjected, of needless repetitions, which 
betray an editor in the process of compilation rather 
than an author throwing off a continuous story in the 
white heat of creation." 1 

The "new criticism," which has done so much to 
disturb the old faith in the Bible as a literal and "in- 
errant" document fraught in every line with a mys- 
terious and superlative quality, has been controlled by 
a patient and devout spirit in many Christian scholars 

1 Book of the Beginnings, R. H. Newton, p. 13. 

238 



The Bible as Intention 

who recognize the importance of criticism but are 
keenly adequate to detect the sophistry of prejudice. 
So much that is written in the modern vein about the 
Bible seems vitiated by an assumption of the preva- 
lent style of ethnological essays; too much is taken 
for granted, and the level of criticism seems too much 
lowered for a really useful and philosophic analysis 
of its character and origin. Such books are agreeable 
and instinctively imitate the genial and suggestive 
methods of writers who explain the genesis of myths, 
or separate the skeins of fiction and history that are 
woven in the literary texture of primitive writings or 
traditions. The element of religious enthusiasm and 
restrained judgment is wanting in these studies. They 
follow too nimbly and with too much alacrity every 
suggestion or guess that robs the Bible narrative of its 
august character or diminishes its claims upon our 
attention as in some way a revelation, and a remark- 
able and transcendental work. This makes much of 
this examination shallow, while it remains seductive 
and plausible. We are far from wishing to quarrel 
with any system of criticism that relieves us from the 
strained and rigid formalism of the literal spirit, but 
we know that such systems often fail to hear the voice 
of God as it can be heard in that strange, beautiful, 
and persistent companion of men's lives which we call 
the Bible. They strive to be very scientific, and their 
authors are readily dazzled by the prestige of learned 
men, and perhaps are not unwilling to excite antago- 
nism by a somewhat rude display of indifference to 

239 



The World as Intention 

loftier aspects of the work and the love which gen- 
tle natures feel for it. They flatten the Bible into 
a mere commonplace of ethnic origins and expunge its 
supreme and mystical import. They are at war with 
the retinue of spiritual interpretations which the read- 
ing of the Bible has started into life in more ethereal 
and introspective minds. In this way they have been 
ineffective and prosaic, and the delicate second-sight 
which such opposite natures as Newman and Maurice 
possess has left in their words slender traces of its 
beneficent and informing power. They make the 
Bible an Hebraic counterpart of the Nibelungenlied, 
the Kalevala, and the Homeric poems, infusing in it 
something more unusual than these ethnic produc- 
tions contain, and flattering its admirers with an elo- 
quent tribute to its poetic character. They give it a 
purely human origin which somehow has appropriated 
a higher and nobler spirit and remained unique 
through some indefinable accession of supramundane 
qualities, and they say this with grace, and a pleasing 
infusion of the modern lackadaisical philosophic 
poetizing and word-play. 

They miss the right view, we think, which leaves 
its recondite and authoritative character as a revela- 
tion unassailed, while it recognizes and appropriates 
all that modern scholarship can confidently assert of 
its human handiwork, its accidents of transmission, its 
inconsistent, equivocal, and obscure repetitions and 
contradictions, and its embodiment of primitive super- 
stitions and archaic myths. This view makes it a 

240 



The Bible as Intention 

revelation, communicated to man by inspiration, 
actually read into his ear through spiritual or mental 
contact with God. But this revelation has been dis- 
guised, perverted, soiled, abraided, and degraded by 
an organic growth developed in the very process of 
its own delivery to man by human habits, instincts, 
customs, fancies, terrors, cults. This theory more ex- 
panded can be conveniently studied and understood 
under the name of the theory of a reciprocal intention 
and response, as regards the initial stages of the reve- 
lation — the subjective aspect of man under the control 
of God. The objective history of the revelation, by 
which it became subjected to any sort of mechanical 
accident, the loss of parts, the mixture and confusion 
of parts, the absorption of foreign elements, and the 
influence of cults other than the Judaic, is a different 
and simpler matter, readily understood and we believe 
to be implicitly conceded. But the subjective aspect 
of man under the control of God is of superlative im- 
portance, and involves considerations and peculiar 
phenomena which may never be properly elucidated 
even if they can be dimly divined. Before the ob- 
jective relations of the Bible to men and nations and 
the state of the times when it was delivered can be 
discussed this paramount view must be explained and 
illustrated. It lies at the root of this whole matter 
and has a distinct bearing upon the doctrine of 
intention. 

We have said (Prolegomena) that the revelation 
of the Old Testament was one of desire on the part 

241 



The World as Intention 

of God and of necessity on the part of man; that de- 
sire and necessity were both realized simultaneously 
in the Supreme Mind, but the reaction for their pres- 
entation was not simultaneously evoked in man, so 
that we have two revelations whose separation has 
been conditioned on the attitude or state of man. 

Now, if the first was prompted by desire on the part 
of God it becomes an intention of God, since "the 
fundamental ingredient and the reagent which de- 
velops intention within the mind is desire" (Arti- 
cles of Intention). Therefore the Bible is an intention. 
But if an intention, how when man, from inactivity, 
his rudimentary state or alienation, did not wish it, 
were its contents to be vouchsafed? In but one way. 
By an act of the Supreme Mind forcing upon man 
its realization, zvhich when forced upon him mo- 
mentarily awoke the desire for it, a desire not at 
that time naturally present. This is the theory of 
reciprocal intention and response, and by it we antici- 
pate the reiteration of revelation as new agents in the 
history of Israel responded to the enforced intentions. 
For this very enforcement points out the absence of 
desire in man for it, and consequently a feeble ac- 
ceptance of it. We are also led to understand that 
there is an exact equivalency between these enforced 
intentions in revelation and those factual variations in 
nature which we have just described as overt acts of 
the Supreme Mind. 

Such enforced intentions exact two suppositions : 
first, that the Supreme Mind can awaken thought in 

242 



The Bible as Intention 

the human mind, and, secondly, that the human mind 
can express it. Herein we meet the fact of resistance, 
which the assumption of intention in the Bible presup- 
poses. For, as we have said, an intention is instantly 
realized, if permissible, inasmuch as it is an attitude 
of mind prompted by desire, unless resistance, circum- 
stantial or intentional, prevents it. Intention in the 
Bible was not realized, as, for the completion of what- 
ever purpose it represented, it has required over four 
thousand years for its dictation and completion. 

The Bible is necessarily the expression of resistance, 
as all its elements of composition presuppose time. 
It neither appeared in a thundercloud nor flowed from 
the pen of a single inspiration with supernatural in- 
stantaneity. It is itself both revelation and a history 
of revelation, and under the circumstances of its pro- 
mulgation it was traditional and oral before it was 
written, it was in parts before it was adjusted in one 
whole, and it was collected and put together not under 
infallible guidance but at a period of very defective 
scholarship. We shall, then, expect to find it exem- 
plify the principle of defectivity, and examination at 
least may bring to view in it as in nature the secular 
rise of intention. 1 

We do not know whether intentional resistance has 



1 There is an aspect of circumstantial resistance we have not adverted to, 
to any extent, in this chapter. It is the philosophical position that the Su- 
preme Mind is unknowable by man. The famous Bampton Lectures of Dean 
Mansel established this firmly, and these words of that extraordinary thinker 
reveal the necessary magnitude of circumstantial resistance in any revelation. 
They are: "In revelation, as in natural religion, God is represented under finite 
conceptions, adapted to finite minds; and the evidences on which the author- 
ity of revelation rests are finite and comprehensible also." 

243 



The World as Intention 

maimed or impaired the message of the Bible, except 
in so far indirectly as it has acted through the accidents 
of man's nature and the infirmity of his organs, or 
except as it clogs the receptivity of man's sense to the 
precise comprehension of the truth. And yet in pas- 
sages of the Bible which seem to ascribe to God the 
sentiments and motives of human nature, in its de- 
praved and rude conditions, and quote his commands 
and toleration in support of barbarous and corrupting 
practices, which soil the conception of an Omnipotent 
Power by attributing to its skill and suggestions 
trifling deceits and odious cruelty, there almost seems 
traceable at times the insidious entrance of a sinister 
and scoffing spirit, a disintegrating and rebellious 
agency, a low antagonism furthering its subtle and 
hostile intention by imputations and by lies. Before 
touching upon this question — before, indeed, we ask 
what is the nature of intention in the Bible at all — let 
us point out the value and the reality of the theory of 
reciprocal intention and response. The theory as- 
sumes that the Supreme Mind can institute ideas in 
the mind of its recipient, the human organism. It 
assumes that this recipiency will be greater or less, 
strong or weak, clear or obscure, according to the 
individual peculiarities of the receiving mind, as an 
instrument played upon by a performer will repeat 
and reveal his thought as its perfection of structure, 
strictness of adjustment, and beauty of tone are more 
and more absolute. It assumes that this action of 
enforced intention becomes objectified, perhaps, to the 

244 



The Bible as Intention 

subject, and in responding to an overwhelming utter- 
ance from within, the candid and extraspective nature 
of many men and races interprets and records it as an 
utterance from without. And this is all assumed in 
strict analogy with science and in a measure in close 
agreement with the results of science, from the phe- 
nomena of telepathy, while it makes the singularity 
and perhaps the preposterousness of the literal con- 
ceptions of revelations accordant with a more reason- 
able view. 

It is not quite easy to find among theologians and 
biblical scholars any satisfactory definition of inspira- 
tion, and the popular idea derived from the language of 
Scripture does not lend itself to any credible image of 
the exact facts. For we cannot accept some crude 
hypothesis of a voice speaking from the ambient 

air like 

"airy tongues that syllable men's names 
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses," 

wherever we read "God spake" ; and we are quite sure 
that the inspiration in form and possibly in contents is 
never quite free from the influence and tincture of the 
nature it permeates. 

Some diversity of usage and opinion among early 
Christian writers prevailed as to the inspiration, 
validity, and character of the Scriptures. Dr. Ladd 
says: "Irenseus, for example, thinks that nothing in 
the Bible is vain, or without significance, or without 
some argument in it. And Origen cannot believe that 
the evangelist would, without some precise purpose, 

245 



The World as Intention 

represent the blind man as throwing off his coat when 
he came to Jesus ;" "The infallibility of Scripture was. 
then, in their minds, a natural and naive deduction 
from their conception of inspiration. And yet, in the 
work of studying the Bible in detail, the fathers of 
the church met with biblical facts which forced them 
to occasional explanations or admissions destructive 
of their main argument. The use of the allegorical 
interpretation was, however, their unfailing resort in 
all such cases of difficulty;" "As to the nature of 
inspiration, the early Christian writers held, as a rule, 
the same mechanical view which we have already 
found to have been held by Philo and the Jewish 
rabbis. In this way must we interpret their habitual 
use of such titles as 'organs of the divine voice,' 
'mouth of God,' etc., for apostles and prophets. They 
are also fond of representing the Spirit of God as 
using its human instruments as the player does his 
lyre or flute, or as the scribe uses the reed with which 
he writes" (a use of the image quite distinct from that 
we have employed above) ; "We actually find the 
fathers of the ancient church correlating historical 
statements taken from the apocryphal with those taken 
from the canonical books of the Old Testament and 
coordinating prophecies from pseudo -prophetic writ- 
ings with those from the Hebrew prophets by applying 
the same sacred formula of citation to both;" Augus- 
tine "regarded the attempt of Jerome to translate the 
Hebrew directly into Latin as dangerous. Much of 
his own interpretation of Scripture is a strange 

246 



The Bible as Intention 

mixture of allegorizing and rationalizing. To him 
clouds are prophets and teachers; oxen are prophets 
and apostles ; birds are spiritual proud men ; and bulls 
are heretics. To what lower depths can the 'spiritual- 
izing' of Scripture descend than to regard the drunken- 
ness of Noah as a type of the passion of our Lord? 
Augustine's view of the Bible was dominated by his 
interest in dogmatic and practical expedients, by his 
desire to tone up others in theological opinion and 
ecclesiastical discipline. No error must be admitted 
to have occurred in the canonical writers; 'faith will 
totter if the authority of the divine Scriptures wavers.' 
If anything there seems untrue, Augustine is ready to 
hold that the manuscript is corrupt, the version is 
false ; or else he cannot understand the passage. And 
yet he expressly declares that the whole dispensation 
of the Bible is temporal, and he who is himself per- 
fected by faith, hope, and charity will have no need 
of the Bible, except for instructing and disciplining 
others;" Jerome "held that the apparent historical and 
moral blemishes of the Old Testament must be covered 
over by the allegorical interpretation. The geographi- 
cal difficulties of the stations in the wilderness he 
would dispose of in this way: they are to be inter- 
preted spiritually. How otherwise are we to under- 
stand the fact that, according to the chronology of the 
Greek version, Methuselah must have lived for four- 
teen years after the flood, and yet did not enter the 
ark with Noah ; or the fact that Hagar treats Ishmael 
like a suckling, and carries him on her back, although 

247 



The World as Intention 

he was eighteen years of age?" 1 Such considerations 
certainly have puzzled many. 

Professor Crippen in reviewing the different 
opinions of students and divines regarding the Bible 
and its inspiration says : "Justin and Athenagoras 
supposed the sacred writers to be passive under the 
divine influence, like a lyre or flute in the hands of a 
musician;" "Origen strongly protested against the 
theory of passive reception and understood inspiration 
to be an illumination of the prophet's mind 'as far as 
necessary' ;" "Eusebius thought it presumptuous to ad- 
mit the possibility of error in the sacred books. 
Chrysostom called the prophets 'the mouth of God/ 
and Augustine spoke of the apostles as hands which 
noted down what Christ dictated. Gregory the Great 
regarded the personality of the human writers as of 
secondary importance, the Holy Ghost being the real 
author. Notwithstanding all this, the personal pe- 
culiarities of the sacred writers received a fair share 
of recognition;" "the Jansenists contended earnestly 
for verbal inspiration, which was denied by Bellarmine 
and the Jesuits. The Protestant Mystics, as Arndt 
(1621) and Bohme (1624), insisted on the importance 
of the spirit rather than the letter of the word. But 
the orthodox Protestants of the next generation, in 
whose early days the Arminian controversy had raged 
with furious heat, developed a more rigid theory than 
had ever been heard of before. In the Formula Con- 
sensus of the Swiss Reformed Church (1675) it was 

1 What is the Bible? G. T. Ladd, pp. 30-31, 32-33, 40-41. 
248 



The Bible as Intention 

affirmed that even the Hebrew vowel points were an 
essential part of the inspired text I" "The progress of 
biblical criticism effectually undermined these rigid 
theories of verbal inspiration. ... In 1766 J. G. 
Tollner enunciated the principle that Holy Scripture 
contains, rather than is, the Word of God. This 
principle has been accepted in substance by most 
orthodox theologians of recent times, though some of 
them have loudly protested against it in form." 1 

Ewald presents a picture of primitive inspiration 
which reproduces in a picturesque and possibly figura- 
tive manner the concrete and crude literalness of the 
popular view. He says: "To man in that primitive 
age what a moment it must have been when, from that 
Being who, he felt, was at once the mightiest and most 
mysterious, from whom he sought in his anguish and 
need to elicit speech and response, counsel and help, 
and who remained nevertheless so long before him in 
silence and reserve, he for the first time distinguished 
a clear word sounding toward him, a short sentence, 
it may be, but of luminous import and beneficent 
effect ! The thought of hearing such a response in all 
clearness from above was new changed to actual reali- 
zation; that ego, whom he was sensible of not simply 
as his own better ego, but as standing infinitely above 
his mere puny self, and whose clear decision he had 
so deeply yearned to hear, now became vocal before 
him with word and encouragement. When once he 
had thus heard, words which, as if from the mouth of 

1 Popular Introduction to the History of Christian Doctrine, T. G. Crippen. 

249 



The World as Intention 

the otherwise so silent Deity, sounded suddenly toward 
him laid hold upon him wonderfully, delivered him 
from his unrest and helplessness." 1 

We have found an interesting and impressive expo- 
sition of inspiration by Dr. Dorner, which expresses 
quite delicately and deeply the more generalized form 
of the theory we wish to defend here, and which we 
reserve until we have briefly explained that theory. 
The various views of inspiration all doubtless revolve 
around a very true and profound reality, but they 
seem vague and scarcely definable in scientific terms, 
though they constantly approach the ideas we present 
in this chapter, without exact coincidence. We have 
therefore no antecedent established and well supported 
theory or doctrine of inspiration to criticise or display, 
and this theory of reciprocal intention and response, or 
divine telepathy, is recommended not by authority but 
by its congruity and adequacy, above all by its ex- 
perimental reality. 

Telepathy is an established fact, it has become a 
department of experimental observation, it has occu- 
pied the attention of trained and scientific minds, it is 
not a fad of superstition or an extemporized defense 
of credulity. The psychical societies of America and 
England are seriously training their powers and in- 
struments of research upon it, and the collected re- 
sults of experiment and inquiry have, at least in 
England, given the world a substantial and intelligible 
basis of ideas for doctrinal and religious uses. 

1 Revelation, Its Nature and Record, H. Ewald, p. 21. 
25O 



The Bible as Intention 

Telepathy, or thought-transference, covers a wide 
range of possible phenomena in which the influence of 
mind upon mind, without any physical contact or 
verbal premonition, is exhibited. Its importance is 
considerable, for, as Mr. Myers observes, "in the case 
of religion telepathy, as we affirm it, would be the first 
indication of a possible scientific basis for much that 
now lacks not only experimental confirmation, but even 
plausible analogy." 1 It would be very objectionable to 
burden these pages with even a small extract from the 
voluminous evidences to the truth of telepathy. We 
are aware that the accumulation of material illustrat- 
ing many phases and sorts of mental control and un- 
conscious communication between different minds has 
been impugned as untrustworthy, and although no 
question has ever been raised as to the good faith of 
the observers, it has been insisted that their methods 
either permitted or invited fraud, and that certain 
inevitable and habitual tendencies in minds generally 
produced results which were natural coincidences and 
not superinduced effects. 2 It has also been hinted that 

1 Phantasms of the Living, Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, Introduction. 

2 For instance, the results reached by Messrs. Gurney Myers, and Podmore 
have been criticised upon the basis of their experiments with number finding, 
a very small section of their work, and one, as Mr. Gurney says, entirely negligible 
in their results. Drs. Minot and Jastrow, we believe, regard the successful 
guessing of numbers largely due to "number habit, " by which agent and 
percipient, having similar "number habits," choose to think of the same number, 
for it has been remarked "that quite constantly an undue number of successes 
occurred at the beginning of many sets of number guessings. The explanation 
is that at first the skeptic regards the whole process as nonsensical, thinks 
of the first number that pops into his head, that is, he follows his number 
habit; but later, wondering at the successes, he suspects something, and adopts 
a more arbitrary mode of selection; whereupon the successes are less frequent," 
and people having similar number habits choose the same numbers in a ratio 
far greater than can be explained by chance. To which Mr. Gurney said 
(Science, vol. ix, p. 234) that they had taken the precaution to have the num- 
bers drawn, not chosen, and further that the number habit was not likely to 
affect long series where all the numbers appear again and again. Mr. Gurney s 



The World as Intention 

the English examiners were too careless and gullible, 
and that their own ardor and stimulation in exploring 
this exciting field led them to partially forget the con- 
servative caution and rigorous scrutiny which a 
scientific investigation demands. These imputations 
have been met in part, and do not in any case discredit 
entirely the extraordinary cumulative force of the 
evidence, which, as Dr. Gurney remarks, taken as a 
whole, "resembles not so much a shifting shadow, 
which may be left to individual taste or temperament 
to interpret, as a solid mass seen in twilight, which it 
may be easy indeed to avoid stumbling over, but only 
by resolutely walking away from it." Now, the de-. 
liberate opinion of the authors of Phantasms of the 
Living, after conducting a great many experiments, 
reviewing the field traversed by other observers, and 
studying a long collection of narratives, is this : They 
say that in this peculiar domain of thought-transfer- 
ence whereby ideas, images, sensations, and words are 
conveyed without physical contact from one person to 
another they have obtained a "firm foothold"; that 
they "know that these unuttered messages do truly 
travel, that these emotions mix and spread ; and though 
they refrain as yet from further dwelling on the 
corollaries of this far-reaching law, it is not because 
such speculations need any longer be baseless." 

The first condition involving telepathy is a condi- 
tion that underlies and controls all possible transmitted 



letter seems careful, and shows that he and his colleagues were alive to the 
proper appreciation of accidental coincidences. 

252 



The Bible as Intention 

influence, namely, identity of material and phase. The 
efficiency with which vibration from one set or series 
of molecules is communicated to another set depends 
upon the identity of the materials and their similar 
molecular tension. The rapidity of vibration of dif- 
ferent wires of the same length and thickness is 
inversely proportional to the square roots of their 
densities (Tyndall), and consequently a note produced 
by the vibration of a wire of the light metal aluminium 
will not be identically communicated to a wire of the 
same length and size of the heavy metal platinum if 
both are subjected to the same stretching weights. 
The iron wire must be the more heavily weighted to 
become in unison with the aluminium wire. The sec- 
ond condition, that of unison, is involved necessarily. 
Two tuning forks sounding the same note will respond 
to each other, and one of them set in vibration will, 
through the impacts of the oscillating air between 
them, finally evoke its note from the other. But this 
sympathy is dependent upon the synchronism of 
the two. 

Telepathy is manifestly a discrete and peculiar in- 
fluence, and we can form no intelligible notion of the 
action it involves without this necessary assumption, 
that the minds responding to one another are funda- 
mentally alike and measurably sympathetic. If we can 
conceive of various genera or substantially different 
minds as the mind of a centaur, the mind of a dog, 
and a human mind, our assertion simply implies that 
these different minds are precluded from exerting 

253 



The World as Intention 

successful telepathic influences upon one another. 
Again, sympathy, similar phase or tension, must be 
required, at least in such higher and more recondite 
manifestations of this psychical current as involve 
ideas and mental illumination. As Professor Lodge 
says, "It is because of these rather delicate psycho- 
logical conditions that one cannot press the variations 
of an experiment as far as one would do in dealing 
with inert and more dependable matter;" commenting 
on which our authors remark that "the man who first 
hears of thought-transference very naturally imagines 
that, if it is a reality, it ought to be demonstrated to 
him at a moment's notice. He forgets that, the ex- 
periment being essentially a mental one, his own pres- 
ence — so far as he has a mind — may be a factor in it ; 
that he is demanding that a delicate weighing opera- 
tion shall be carried out, while he himself, a person of 
unknown weight, sits judicially in one of the scales. 
After a time he will learn to allow for the conditions 
of his instruments, and will not expect in the opera- 
tions of an obscure vital influence the rigorous 
certainty of a chemical reaction." 

The first condition involving telepathy is a condi- 
tion that underlies and controls all possible transmitted 
influences, namely, identity of material and phase. 
The efficiency with which vibrations from one set or 
series of molecules are communicated to another set 
depends upon the identity of the materials and their 
similar sensitivity. The theory of reciprocal intention 
and response as applied to inspiration or revelation in 

254 



The Bible as Intention 

the Bible is a theory of telepathy applied to the rela- 
tions between men and the Supreme Mind, and it 
presupposes, as in the phenomena of social telepathy, 
an identity of material and a sympathy of state. It 
exacts as a scientific requirement what philosophy has 
claimed on a basis of rational and Christian theology, 
namely, the mental unity of God and man. The 
feasibility of human psychical transference of thought 
is inlaid in the fundamental assumption that human 
minds are alike, and that as between individuals that 
are similar and individuals that are dissimilar the 
former will institute unions more easily than the latter. 
So in divine telepathy, in inspiration, in revelation, we 
predicate an intimate association between man and 
God, as fundamentally alike in mental nature, and as 
allied most intimately in those individual cases where 
we discover and listen to transcendental messages and 
images. We believe the Supreme Mind possessed 
with an intention to make a revelation to man has 
made it in the Bible and has made it by the agency of 
a psychical transference of thought whereby human 
agents become the influenced percipients of this in- 
tention and produce and record it. Such is the theory 
of reciprocal intention and response, and we apprehend 
the difficulties to be encountered — the circumstantial 
resistances — which would mar or disturb the trans- 
mission of the message. For in human experience 
telepathy is induced quite brokenly, now appearing, 
now disappearing, according to moods and persons, 
and the vividness of transmitted impressions is very 

255 



The World as Intention 

unequal, the reproduction of an idea being at times 
complete, then partial, and then absent. It is even 
associated with certain periods of life, disappearing, 
for instance, with age. We are told that the Creery 
children lost sensitivity as they grew older; "the 
faculty did not continue in full force ; on the contrary, 
the average of successes gradually declined, and the 
children regretfully acknowledged that their capacity 
and confidence were deserting them." 1 

It is true that in the process of revelation the agent 
— the Supreme Mind — is immeasurably stronger and 
more compelling than in the case of human agency, 
and the receptive mind in that paleoethnic period when 
revelation was vouchsafed must have been convulsed 
by the ponderous and piercing assertion of the divine 
mind penetrating the recesses of its flexed brain, that 
poured out to consciousness bidden words, or threw 
upon the screen of events and natural objects the 
palpable outlines of heavenly visitations. 2 But it is 
also true that the utterance from a man brought under 
the mesmic spell of inspiration might speak indis- 
tinctly, the clogged conduits of thought might fail to 
emit the overpowering ideas or only represent them 
in tangled words and chaotic splendor. This would 



1 For complete candor, it must be noted that in later experiments with these 
remarkable children it was discovered that they used a code of signals. To 
what extent the earliest results were vitiated by fraud is not known, though 
it is most probable that this artifice was not resorted to or thought of before 
the recognition of their waning powers suggested its convenient substitution. 

2 Dr. Lodge says in his report on telepathy: "I asked one of them what she 
felt when impressions were coming freely, and she said she felt a sort of influence 
or thrill. They both say that several objects appear to them sometimes, but 
that one among thern persistently recurs, and they have a feeling when they 
fix upon one that it is the right one." 



256 



The Bible as Intention 

be true especially of those forecastings and prophecies 
which mingled with ethical emotions and stirred, in 
some natural way, the prophet's own poetic forces 
which surged into the current of the imposed message 
and bewildered and overloaded it with imagery and 
passion. Their writing is tumultuous, like a billowy 
and frothy ocean, and over its waves of majestic 
prosody stalk monstrous apparitions. Professor 
Briggs says: "Ordinarily Hebrew prophecy comes 
from prophets who have the internal subjective as- 
surance of the truth of God and their commission to 
declare it. But in all cases of objective as well as 
subjective assurance the prophet's powers are taxed 
to the utmost to give expression, in the human forms 
of his own nature and surroundings, to the divine 
ideas that have taken possession of him. ,,1 

In the earlier books of revelation, where directions 
were simple and an historic process of theocratic con- 
trol was evolved, published, and written down, the 
language is more direct, comprehensible, and perspic- 
uous — as would be natural. But in these narratives 
much that appears as fact may be the inevitable con- 
sequences of that system of communication which we 
are here setting forth, and, further, they may have 
been consequences appertaining to the sensory im- 
pressions of an entire nation. We do not wish to 
ascribe too much to this, nor fall into the vice of 
emasculating the Bible by stripping it of its thau- 
maturgic intensity and voiding from it the energy of 

1 Messianic Prophecy, C A. Briggs, p. 21. 
257 



The World as Intention 

miraculous events. But we have regarded the Bible 
as an intention, we are approaching the subject of the 
principle of defectivity apparent in the Bible as we 
saw it in nature, because of resistance, and we only 
here indicate that the method of divine telepathy incurs 
inherent difficulties which will make its own transcript 
to some extent fallacious, will bring into play that 
very principle of defectivity which in other ways we 
know is present! The appearance of the Lord to 
Abraham in the plains of Mamre, the voices "out of 
heaven," the burning bush at Horeb, in some measure 
perhaps the display and speeches at Mount Sinai, may 
have been projected hallucinations when the human 
mind became encompassed and possessed with the 
divine control. The aptitude of sage and seer and 
poet to hear and see the unveiled and hidden things 
of God was exercised and animated by this trans- 
mitted influence, which built a world about them, 
exalted their senses into superfine ecstasies of sensi- 
tivity, and threw around and before them the material- 
ized images of their glowing etherized minds. We 
believe this effect is to be considered as interfering 
with the exactitude of the revelation, and introduces 
in part the element of circumstantial resistance which 
the intention in the Bible receives. 

But circumstantial resistance bringing about de- 
fectivity in the Bible has acted in other ways than by 
the superinduced affections of the mind through divine 
telepathy. There is the congenital weakness of early 
and simple peoples for wonder and marvels, the 

258 



The Bible as Intention 

dormancy of their scientific sense, the methods of 
traditional transmissions, 1 the crudeness and rudeness 
of manners and arts, the shock of wars, the abrading 
agency of time, the contemporaneous existence of 
diverse traditions, the flowering of legends, and the 
lapse of memory. Again, large parts of the Scripture 
are anecdotal or historical, and though the record of 
events may have been protected by infallible direction 
it is not precisely consonant with a conception of in- 
spiration that a story-teller of events is inspired to tell 
them correctly though the events may have been 
guided and the actors moved by Providence. Take 
the narratives of the wanderings of Israel in the wil- 
derness for forty years. Mr. Greene has elaborately 
undertaken to disprove the current view of the course 
of the Israelites in their journey from Egypt to the 
Promised Land. He says : "In the same breath we are 
taught that this Heaven-guided people were led to 
and fro for nearly forty years in a region which may 
be roughly estimated at one hundred miles square, 
adjacent to Canaan and to Egypt, and furnishing the 
only line of communication between the latter powerful 
kingdom and the East — a region which they could at 
any time have quitted in less than a week ; and, further, 
that they were conducted in this miraculous manner 
'nowhere' for no other purpose than that of letting 



1 Traditional transmission is not, however, so altogether capricious and 
vague as might be imagined. Professor Max Miiller has described the wonderful 
minuteness and tenacity of memory among the Hindus, who retain long books 
of their sacred literature with such marvelous distinctness that comparisons 
of different readings are made, based only on the discrepant but persistent 
narrative of different persons. 

259 



The World as Intention 

them die out (Num. 14. 29-33 )-" 1 He says the 
Israelites crossed as the caravans do to-day directly 
over the Desert of Et-Tih, came into the gorge or 
rocky ravine of Eb-Araba at Elath — head of the gulf 
of Akaba — passed to Petra or Mount Horeb, from 
whence they entered Moab, and that the long time 
which was supposed to elapse before they acquired 
possession of their destined homes was occupied in the 
conquest of the land east of the river Jordan, and that 
when some of the tribes crossed the Jordan and oc- 
cupied Palestine the record of their forty years' 
wanderings alludes to the long antecedent series of 
years and events before this last act was accomplished. 
He says (p. 433) : "The severance between those who 
settled on the opposite sides of the Jordan was 
politically and religiously complete before the estab- 
lishment of the monarchy, though at a later period 
the successful campaigns of the kings of Israel may 
have given to their people possessions on the left 
bank of the river. But according to the conceptions 
of Cis~Jordanic Israel theirs was the land of Canaan, 
theirs was the Land of Promise. They could not 
deny the fact that the firstborn of those who quitted 
Egypt held the trans-Jordanic possessions by virtue 
of a covenant with the Deity who had led them 
through the wilderness; but they found it convenient 
to represent them as nevertheless receiving it as a 
reward for their services in aiding the younger but 
favored branch to expel the Canaanites. The founda- 

1 The Hebrew Migration from Egypt, J. B. Greene, p. 3. 
260 



The Bible as Intention 

tions were thus laid for the superstructure of pious 
romance of which nearly half the book of Joshua is 
composed. The story of the migration from Egypt, 
many of the details of which had become confused and 
obscure, was travestied for the greater glorification 
of God, and the higher exaltation of those who 
established themselves in Canaan." 

The whole aspect of this argument, in perfect 
fairness, is injured by assumptions, the plausible in- 
sinuation of doubts, and a rash estimate of probabili- 
ties, with apparently no appreciation of those interior 
spiritualistic forces which somehow or other were 
wrapped up in the tissues of everyday events in that 
peculiar history of the Jews which became a record 
of events and a poem of religious delectation and 
instruction. It does not seem right to concede that 
Mr. Greene has proved his point. There is a good deal 
of free guessing and some illegitimate appearance of 
certainty in his book, we think. But it does show 
what questions may be fairly raised, how far they can 
derive support from criticism, and brings to view that 
principle of defectivity which penetrates all parts of 
the Bible, as the result of an intention introduced into 
the world against resistance. We have suggested that 
there may be intentional resistance in the Bible, as if 
we saw there the disfiguring traces of a maleficent 
spirit arrayed against the intention of the Supreme 
Mind as it is arrayed against it in nature {ante), in 
the church, in the individual. The thought is not a 
strange one to theological students. In Mr. Lea's 

261 



The World as Intention 

remarkable History of the Inquisition we read an 
interesting account of the Manichsean or Albigensian 
heresy, in which the theory of the demon origin of 
the Old Testament and the divine origin of the New 
is described. He says : "Thus in the Paulician faith 
we find two coequal principles, God and Satan, of 
whom the former created the invisible, spiritual, and 
eternal universe, the latter the material and temporal, 
which he governs. Satan is the Jehovah of the Old 
Testament; the prophets and patriarchs are robbers, 
and, consequently, all Scripture anterior to the gospels 
is to be rejected. The New Testament, however, is 
Holy Writ." 1 

Much of such speculation must be regarded as fan- 
ciful, or the facts may be regarded as more indirectly 
related to an opposing mind, through those elements 
of evil and ignorance which are implanted in man 
himself, and appear with a kind of masterful ferocity 
in early ages. In treating so delicate a theme the 
sincere thinker is recommended to look at the strong 
and generous study of Canon Mozley, entitled Ruling 
Ideas in Early Ages. This noble and eloquent work 
defends, with profound culture and fine zeal, the idea 
that the apparent cruelty and vindictiveness of God, 
shown in the pages of the Old Testament, represents 
the necessary appropriation of defensive measures to 
maintain the bulwarks of monotheistic thought against 
the inundations of heathenism. The author says : "In 
assuming a God in the dispensation we assume a 

1 History of the Inquisition, H. C. Lea, vol. i, p. 91- 
262 



The Bible as Intention 

presiding mind and intention; and of that intention 
not the immediate fact, but the upshot of the dispensa- 
tion, is the test. We say the upshot is worth all the 
extraordinary and apparently lowering accommoda- 
tion, the stooping process, and humiliation of the 
divine government. God allowed, during all those 
ages, rude men to think of him as one of themselves, 
acting with the rudest and dimmest idea of justice. 
But he condescended at the moment to prevail and 
conquer in the end. In entering into and accepting 
their confused ideas he grappled with them. Through 
what a chaos of mistakes did final light arise and the 
true idea of justice make its way in the world ! And 
God tolerated the mistakes, and allowed his commands 
to go forth in that shape, but the condescension was 
worth the result. It is the result alone which can 
explain those accommodations; but the result does 
explain them, and bring them out as successful divine 
policy." 1 

On the basis of the definition of a miracle given in 
the Prolegomena it seems to us that many marvelous 
statements in the Old and New Testaments must be 
discarded. We said there that a miracle is the act 
of creativeness, summoning forth dormant or latent 
properties, 2 or bestowing new properties to matter, 
and that it could not contravene law, because law 
itself is the manifestation of the properties of matter. 
To illustrate its application: On this rule of inter- 

1 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, J. B. Mozley, p. 252. 

2 This includes the idea of "intensification of force." See essay by Rev. J. 
Douglas (R. C), in the Bibliotheca Sacra. October, 1888. 

26S 



The World as Intention 

pretation the extraordinary exploits of the prophet 
Elisha might remain, if anything is to be gained by 
retaining them, but the story of the tribute money 
found by Matthew in the stomach or mouth of the 
fish would be rejected, as well as the story of Jonah. 1 
The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego can 
be interpreted as the illustration of a transmutation of 
properties, but the opportune arrest of the motion of 
the sun in Joshua cannot. The matter is not one of 
supreme importance; the miracles of Christ are im- 
measurably beyond these strange half-mythic spirit- 
ualized and yet instructive stories of the Old Testa- 
ment. And it is true that the miracles of Christ 
illustrate the bestowal of new properties or the restora- 
tion of those that have been lost or injured. Again, 
the intention of the Supreme Mind in granting a true, 
full, and perfect revelation has been opposed, hindered, 
and defeated by circumstances which belong to the 
miracle-loving and credulous character of early ages. 
What M. Renan has said of Asia may be imputed to 
that whole period in which the Testaments arose; 
though the imputation must be qualified by many re- 
spectful and absolute reservations. This subtle writer 
says: Asia "etait le pays le plus pieux du monde, le 
pays ou la credulite offrait aux inventeurs de religions 
nouvelles le champ le mieux prepare. Devenir dieu 
etait la chose tres-f acile : les incarnations, les tournees 
terrestres des immortels passaient pour des evenements 



1 This latter subject is treated at length in the Methodist Review for xi 
We have lost the exact reference. 



264 



The Bible as Intention 

ordinaires : toutes les impostures reussissaient." 1 Per- 
haps this statement can hardly be questioned. 

The principle of defectivity in the Bible as ex- 
pressing an intention, working against resistance, is 
the formal characterization of a fact recognized by 
scholars. Says Dr. Briggs: "Contemporary history 
sets the Bible in the midst of the external history of 
the world in which the history of redemption took 
place. It enables us to see the influence of other 
nations with their literature, religion, and civilization 
upon Israel, the people of God. It gives us a test by 
which to examine the biblical records. On the whole, 
a flood of light has been thrown upon the Bible. 
Many old difficulties have been removed, but other 
and more difficult questions have been raised. The 
results have very much changed the lines of Christian 
evidence and are likely to change them still more in 
the future." 2 

Finally, the canon of Scripture was not determined 
by inspiration ; whatever may be said as to the inspira- 
tion of its parts, we know of no evidence that their 
compilation has been itself an inerrant process. Ewald 
says : "There are few historical books, therefore, now 
in the Old Testament which have been preserved per- 
fectly as they were first composed. The latest of all, 
the book of Esther, is the only one that we can claim 
as wholly such ; in the little book of Ruth we observe, 
at the end at least, a literal copy of older writings. It 
therefore must certainly cost no little trouble to dis- 

1 L'EgHse Chretienne, E. Renan. 3 Whither? C. A. Briggs, D.D. 

265 



The World as Intention 

cover and clearly discriminate the original works in 
the present ones. All that has been preserved of them 
is more or less fragmentary and confused, and it is 
often hard enough even to find these fragments cor- 
rectly." 1 As for the canon of the New Testament, it 
was some centuries before it was formed, and in the 
early churches apocryphal gospels and epistles were 
read and used in instructions, and it was the fourth 
century before an authoritative imprimatur of the 
church was placed upon the present group of writings 
known as the New Testament, parts of which still 
remain under the cloud of doubt which an inveterate 
and unsatisfying contest of warring opinions has. 
raised. 

In the preparation of a canon there was, so far as 
evidence can be given, no inspired guidance, but there 
was an appreciation, more or less profound and valu- 
able, of what the intention of Scripture was, what end 
such a compilation was meant to serve, and the im- 
portance and meaning of its parts and composition. 
And what was that intention? what involution of 
ideas arising from desire, guided by thought, and 
directed by will, does the Bible express? For far 
above questions as to the uncertainties of facts, the 
relevancy or irrelevancy of details, disputes upon 
scattered texts, the authorship of books, the literalness 
of language, the lucidity of mind, the contradictions, 
the impressions of fancy or legend or superstition, the 
anthropomorphism and obscurity, rests before us the 

1 History of Israel, H. Ewald, vol. i, p. 60. 
266 



The Bible as Intention 

detection and definition of the intention of the Bible. 1 
By all that must be well emphasized. 

That intention, it may be safely assumed, is life in 
its broadest and deepest sense. It is easy to support 
this conclusion by an appeal to any sort or age of 
theology. It has passed and necessarily remains as 
the fundamental commonplace of theology that the 
Bible is an instruction and a prescription for life. 
Whatever subsidiary conclusion may be accepted as 
to its use as history or as ethics or as literature, its 
preeminent intention is the culture of life and the 
presentation of an ideal of life, and a very positive 
promise and revelation that there is a continuance of 
life hereafter. Neither is such an intention medical 
or physiological. It introduces some peculiar trans- 
cendental elements which have become incorporated 
in a system called the Christian religion, wherein is 
disclosed some vital connections between life and faith 
and acts, and wherein is elaborated a process textual 
and tactual with apparently some deep, unfathomable 
recesses of meaning and some deep, persistent conse- 
quences. Over much of this a veil of uncertainty, a 
thin but obvious fabric of vagueness, seems drawn, 
but there is at least no indecision about one thing, that 
the Bible means life, and life in its spiritualistic alti- 
tudes as a fact of supernatural splendor, potency, and 
permanence. We have seen in Chapters II and III 

1 We have not paused to prove there was intention. Article XII (Articles 
of Intention, Chapter I) gave the marks of intention, and we have discerned 
them in the world. They are application, contrivance, approach. In the 
Bible these marks have been repeatedly dwelt upon, and are the current and 
capital features of all biblical exegesis. 

26j 



The World as Intention 

the gradual intrusion into the world of life under 
higher and higher forms, and we there concluded that 
the intention of the world was life, and that, through 
a process we called the secular rise of intention, higher 
and higher forms of life appeared, until at this period 
or some shortly subsequent period, and possibly in 
some other sphere, the progression was continued into 
more exquisite and better endowed shapes, and the 
assumption of the contents of the divine intention 
became more and more obvious, more and more real, 
effectual, and dazzling. 

The Bible represents an intention of life because it 
is a revelation designedly meant to improve and com- 
plete life. Says Cardinal Newman: "And the whole 
tenor of Scripture from beginning to end is to this 
effect ; the matter of revelation is not a mere collection 
of truths, not a philosophical view, not a religious 
sentiment or spirit, not a special morality, poured out 
upon mankind as a stream might pour itself into the 
sea, mixing with the world's thought, modifying, 
purifying, invigorating it; but an authoritative teach- 
ing which bears witness to itself, and keeps itself to- 
gether as one, in contrast to the assemblage of 
opinions on all sides of it, and speaks to all men, as 
being ever and everywhere one and the same, and 
claiming to be received intelligently by all whom it 
addresses, as one doctrine, discipline, and devotion 
directly given from above!' 1 

But in the Bible we discover also a secular rise of 

1 Grammar of Assent, J. Newman, p. 375. 
268 



The Bible as Intention 

intention, as we did in the world, a passage from plane 
to plane not simply in the sense of a serial display of 
phenomena and personages, but as a flowering of an 
esoteric purpose which penetrates and produces these 
phenomena and these personages. Professor Ladd 
says : "There is a progress of doctrine in the Old Tes- 
tament, but the difficulty of recognizing its precise 
factors and stages is increased by the fact that we do 
not know the date and manner of origin of its different 
books. There is also great and even marvelous prog- 
ress of doctrine between the Old Testament and the 
New. This progress is so great that it is difficult to 
say how far it is proper to regard the New Testament 
morals and religion as growing out of the morals and 
religion of the Old Testament. The fact of such prog- 
ress is chiefly due to the pervasive and incalculably 
great influence of the personality of Jesus Christ. His 
moral and religious teaching was manifestly in some 
sort an outgrowth of that of the ancient Hebrew sacred 
writings. Yet how much more than this it was I" 1 

Ewald traces the stages of revelation as, first, that 
of the individual, preeminently exemplified in Moses, 
in whom "the power of revelation was active as the 
concentrated energy of the individual;" second, that 
of the prophets, which was a higher form as the ex- 
pression of a believing community, "for this species of 
revelation must, before all things, raise itself above 
the mere accidents of the revelation of the individual ;" 
third, Christ's revelation, in which "the truth and love 

1 What is the Bible? G. T. Ladd, p. 287. 
269 



The World as Intention 

and thereby the definite will of God to men may be- 
come in a man most perfectly living and effective/' 
which he believes is perfected or consummated when 
"it knows that for every man without exception it 
possesses the same all-embracing truth, and for every 
foe that opposes it it has the same overmastering 
strength." 1 

Now, what does this secular rise of intention in the 
Bible imply? from what does it arise? In the Prol- 
egomena we attempted to analyze the revelations of 
the Old and New Testaments as being respectively 
from a human standpoint — the only intelligible stand- 
point for human criticism and argument — a revelation 
of need and a revelation of desire. But a revelation 
of need is apt to be the expression of will; it implies 
the exercise of will as implied in the need remedied. 
As we there remarked, "A revelation of need is ap- 
plied from outside, is forcibly introduced into the 
circle of human events, is retained in the world 
against rejection and abuse and natural accidents by 
a system of rules, observances, and special dispensa- 
tions. It is apt to be simple and narrow and unbend- 
ing, it fosters a spirit of pugnacity, and yields under 
the exigencies of circumstances to equivocal methods 
so as to insure its permanency and exclusiveness." 

And a revelation of desire is apt to be the expression 
of feeling; it arises from feeling, and is surcharged 
or is apt to be surcharged with emotion. We have 
said in the Prolegomena, "A revelation of desire is 

1 Revelation: Its Nature and Record, H. Ewald. 
27O 



The Bible as Intention 

invited from within, and comes as a response to eager 
and excited prayers, or as a consolation to vague but, 
on the whole, exacting and feverish inquiry. It is com- 
passionate and attractive, and sways the mind by in- 
nate qualities of beauty, by its reasonable appeals, by 
its wide sympathy, its forbearance, its benignity, its 
importunity and genial and profound culture." 

But if this is so we are reminded that these rev- 
elations belong to two classes of intention, and these 
are intentions of will and desire. In the Articles 
of Intention (Chapter I) we said: "At no time 
can an intention be deprived of any of the elements 
of mind, but intentions can arise which are very 
largely the result of a preponderating influence of one 
only, and they can be so classified. An intention in- 
volving will alone gives birth to a physical act; in it 
feeling is not conspicuous, nor thinking. It may come 
about as a necessity before either feeling or thinking 
has been excited or interrogated, or it may be a 
lapsed form of what has been a full intention with 
feeling and thinking more developed. It characterizes 
simple and often sudden muscular movements, and is 
preeminently an exhibition of the naked will motor." 

The connection here indicated between a physical 
act and an intention of will may seem scarcely apposite 
as an expression of the acts, so far as they can be 
referred to a Supreme Agent, of the Old Testament. 
But the sense of surprise or aversion at first felt 
toward such a view of the acts of the Old Testament 
disappears when we examine those events. For, how- 

271 



The World as Intention 

ever interpreted, these events are, or seem to be, a 
train of physical occurrences controlled or inaugurated 
specially by will and in a manner identical with the 
ordering of his muscular acts by a human agent. The 
call of Abraham, the deliverance from Egypt, the 
wonders of the pilgrimage, the wars of dispos- 
session in Palestine, the captivity and the return, 
the whole scenic display of marvelous changes, epi- 
sodes, and transformations in the Old Testament, are 
referable to will power, not unmixed, of course, with 
either thought or feeling, will power which specifically 
moves agents and compels phenomena as a man moves 
his limbs or wields an implement. 

Of intentions of desire we have said: "When 
feeling suffuses intention our will responds to the 
imperious demands of desire, and the intention van- 
ishes as the desire is gratified. This is a higher 
grade of intention; it embraces more complex ex- 
amples, and it employs loftier attributes of the mind. 
Imagination enters into the tissue of motives springing 
from feeling, stimulating and accelerating their vehe- 
mence, and memory plays into the hands of desire by 
recalling scenes of pleasure, sensations of delight, and 
profitable actions. This class of intentions are not so 
quickly executed; their duration is considerable, and 
they are spread over a longer and wider area of events 
and deeds, they undergo changes of intensity, they 
may become compound and build into themselves a 
number of simple aims which are steps in the complete 
plan of realization. Thought is engaged extensively 

272* 



The Bible as Intention 

in their execution, will acts throughout with a mighty 
sway, under the nervous excitement of desire, explod- 
ing now in actions, now holding the mind fixed with 
an absorbed gaze upon its object. But it is feeling, 
the gratification of emotions, which dominates and 
signalizes this class of intentions, giving them a wide 
psychological range, admixing in their currents the 
notes of love, of hate, of fear. Feeling carries them 
to dramatic denouements, enlivens them with express- 
ive gestures and movements, and throws them for- 
ward into waves of accumulating impetus and size." 

We here use language descriptive of the purely 
human aspect of an intention of feeling, and we have 
before concluded to regard the two Testaments as 
revelations of need and desire, and their characteristics 
as determined by this anthropistic view, because it is 
the only standpoint of intelligible clearness in looking 
at these documents. It is true the theopistic view 
exactly reverses this, and whereas the Old Testament 
is a revelation of desire from a divine point of view, 
it is one of need from a human point of view. 
Similarly the New Testament is a revelation of need 
from a divine standpoint, but one of desire from a 
human standpoint. We have chosen to interpret the 
two Testaments as intentions of will and feeling upon 
this human standpoint, because, when examined, their 
concrete characteristics can be thus most correctly 
correlated. So we have in the Old Testament an in- 
tention of will, and in the New an intention of feeling, 
and a discrete application of the above diagnosis of an 

273 



The World as Intention 

intention of feeling to the New Testament discloses 
its many claims to be regarded as such. 

The very symbol with which it was ushered in, 
"This is my well beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased/' bestows upon it the element of feeling, and 
it has been by feeling that its contents have been pro- 
mulgated and retained. This is too clear to call for 
illustration. 

In a new and broad light the defectivity of the Bible 
becomes revealed as a consequence of incompleteness. 
The intention of the Bible is unfinished. Will and 
feeling are represented, but, though the integral and 
minute elements of each hold, of necessity, the ingre- 
dients of will, feeling, and thought, since no intention 
can exist without them, yet the comprehensive unity 
and perfection of the Bible in its vaster and universal 
outlines is broken. There is yet lacking to the revela- 
tion in its entirety the intention of thought, the be- 
stowal of knowledge, the illumination of the world 
with a revelation of understanding. 

We have said of intentions of thinking that they 
"are perhaps the least common and the most profound. 
They develop the intellectual scope of a man, they 
apply his learning and experience, and absorb his 
nervous force. They enlarge and become complex as 
men grow in years, and they are then attended with 
less effort; the mind turns its concentrated gaze with 
more and more readiness upon mental questions, and 
we frame broader and deeper intellectual projects and 
systems." Such a revelation of thinking or intention 

274 



The Bible as Intention 

of thinking will, then, anthropistically, be a dispensation 
of enlightenment and will involve the intellectual ele- 
vation of the race. It may be accompanied with sin- 
gular and stupendous mental enlargements and altera- 
tions, and thought coincident with truth will hold 
men to the homage of knowledge. 

The promise is read in the two revelations we have, 
that such an intention exists, that it will appear as a 
climax to long preparation and as the rendition of the 
last portions of that intention in the Supreme Mind 
which has slowly reached its aims against resistance, 
and developed its ulterior results in the drama of 
natural changes and human history by a process of 
conflict, iteration, and ascension. Herein is seen the 
cause and the implications of the secular rise of inten- 
tion in the Bible. Finally, these analyses display the 
fact that, in a sense, the Supreme Mind is masked in 
the Bible, We mean that an interpretation, on the 
lines adopted in the doctrine of intention, of the 
Bible forces us to treat it as a book conceived upon 
human principles. For instance, the Old Testament 
theopistically is a revelation of desire, therefore an 
intention of feeling, but we translate it — and the Tes- 
tament itself warrants the translation — as a revela- 
tion of need and therefore an intention of will. 
Similarly with the New. There is a reversal of the 
proper signs, and we find in it a revelation of desire 
and an intention of feeling when it ex hypothesi 
(Prolegomena) is theopistically a revelation of need 
and an intention of will. Herein is evinced that "proc- 

275 



The World as Intention 

ess of stooping" which Canon Mozley has made so 
much of, but it is somewhat more radically explained. 
And this explanation is that the Supreme Mind has 
reflected the human view of revelation, because unless 
it did so its own ends could not be recognized at all, 
could not secure a status intelligibly among men. The 
Supreme Mind throws its intention into a pseudo- 
morphous form, as though the attitude of men toward 
the two revelations was its own. That is, it meets 
man's need of the first revelation with a dispensation 
of force, though its own instinct and affection would 
be portrayed in a dispensation of love. Here re- 
sistance, the effectual weakness, ignorance, and 
criminality of men, perverts the form of revelation, 
requiring a treatment not dictated by the initial im- 
pulse of God's own mind. As we said in the Prole- 
gomena, concerning the Jews, "To save them from the 
dissolving tides of ethnic contamination which flowed 
around them they were bidden to be cruel, they were 
encouraged in extermination, the passions of ferocity 
were kindled and fed, but always utilized toward se- 
curing the continuance of that idea, God and his moral 
relations to men. Strange paradox! The entrance 
into human incidents of a superhuman and presumably 
benign power which lost in part its essential qualities, 
or seemed to lose them, in its employment of man's 
savage instincts for the object of its own perpetuation ! 
... In its germ that first revelation was intended 
to be a revelation of delight because it sprang from 
desire, but it soon, in some way, encountered the need 

276 



The Bible as Intention 

of man for it, and then it assumed secondary and less 
refined and delicate aspects, becoming a system of 
coercion, an ethical code, a province and constitution 
of spiritual culture and manhood, by which man might 
be retained and not lost for the great purposes of 
his creation. In this stage the primal desire parted 
with its ineffable character, and put on more common- 
place, at least definable and natural, forms." Yet that 
yearning of the Supreme Mind for man is traceable 
throughout, but it is suppressed or, like a hidden flame, 
moves unseen beneath the wonders and terrors of a 
rigid theocracy. 

Also, the second revelation becomes man's expres- 
sion of a desirable object of love, a transcendent, 
beautiful, and inviting religion of mercy. Its divine 
expression as a revelation of need is not so obvious, 
though study reveals drastic exhortations and the 
severe norm of rules, the energy and the exclusiveness 
of a system, too often buried out of sight by a flatter- 
ing and blunted exegesis. It is because this reversion 
or substitution is not recognized that some misrepre- 
sentations of both Old and New Testaments arise. 
The savageness and childishness of parts of the Old 
Testament is so much accented and deplored, while 
the generosity and sweetness of the New has given 
rise to a winking latitudinarianism which translates 
it by a process of omissions, exceptions, and im- 
provements. 

The Old Testament represents an intention of de- 
sire and feeling on the part of God, and the New one 

*77 



The World as Intention 

of will and law; but the Supreme Mind has sur- 
rendered to the human phase of mind, by which the 
revelations arose, and the Old Testament presents a 
treatment modeled upon the requirements of man in 
those early days, and the New Testament presents the 
entrance of divinity into human nature as a treatment 
of the divine intention exacted by human necessities 
as sinning and as benefited. The New Testament, in 
a sense, is the superimposition of man's mind upon 
God's. But inspection shows, in the first revelation, 
the movement of a benign and grieving and pitiful 
and ransoming Power, and the second the control of 
a Spirit ushering in redemption by law. This is a 
subject recommended to study. In the doctrine of 
intention it is called the reversion and humiliation of 
the divine intention. 

These aspects of the Bible show how insecure and 
treacherous any literal and invariable rule of interpre- 
tation must be as applied to it. They all tend to 
confirm a conviction that the Bible is an involved and 
multitudinous summary of events and principles, dis- 
turbed at places by the intrusion of ethnic fables, 
national and archaic prepossessions and prejudices, 
and yet retaining within its covers the inspiration 
of the Supreme Mind f that it is the result of intention 
and resistance, and that its study, as the study of 
nature, wherein we also discovered intention and re- 
sistance, is to be intrusted alone to the educated, the 



1 A view of some interest, though perverted, we think, by a characteristic 
subtlety of casuistry, is given in the Dublin Review for July, 1888. 



278 



The Bible as Intention 

careful, and the circumspect; that the Bible is in fact 
a chronicle, a revelation, and an archaeological frag- 
ment, and that in its study we should unite the acumen 
of the historian, the reverence and insight of the 
Christian sage, and the instinct and training of the 
ethnologist. This may appear a rough and temer- 
arious statement, a rude and shallow neglect of the 
skill and delicacy with which the finest minds and 
temperaments have treated that venerable and extraor- 
dinary volume, but to think so is untrue and unjust 
and fatally narrow. Listen to these words from the 
presiding bishop at the Southwell Diocesan Church of 
England Conference, who in speaking of the Old 
Testament said that "it was no longer honest or even 
safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the 
elements of the moral or spiritual grandeur given — so 
the church had always taught and would always 
teach — under the inspiration of Almighty God, was 
sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes in- 
accurate in its history, and sometimes relative and 
accommodating in its morality. It resumed theories 
of the physical world which science had abandoned 
and could never resume ; it contained passages of nar- 
rative which devout and temperate men pronounced 
discredited both by external and internal evidence; it 
praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or 
tolerated conduct which the teaching of Christ and the 
conscience of the Christian alike condemned." This 
language is fair and firm. 

But the doctrine of intention viewing the Bible as 
279 



The World as Intention 

an intention, and as an intention of life, finally an- 
swers the question, what the intention of life, ex- 
pressed in the Bible, is, and answers it with intensity, 
devotion, and emphasis. We have seen in the dis- 
cussion of intention in the world that life is a singular 
and apparently supernaturally bestowed property, that 
it is incommunicable except by processes springing 
from its own institution, and that in the panorama of 
living things it has risen in quality and quantity until 
its apex in man was attained. The life revealed in the 
Bible is also a singular and apparently supernaturally 
bestowed property, is incommunicable except by proc- 
esses springing from its own institution, and in the 
panorama of events written in the Bible has risen in 
quality and quantity until its apex in Christ was at- 
tained. What that life is we are not called upon to 
discuss; that it is something more than food and rai- 
ment, something different from knowledge, and some- 
thing superfine above good manners and decent actions, 
seems conceded. At least a spiritual life is regarded 
as a fact by zealots and very pious Christian men and 
women, and seems with them a very real though in- 
tangible existence, which most of us know nothing of, 
and of which we can have only vague presentiments. 
But there it is, and men who seem to know what they 
are talking about describe it as unaffectedly as we 
might the pains in our backs or the remorse in our 
souls. Dean Burgon writing of "The Good Layman/' 
Charles Longmet Higgins, says : "The set of his 
thoughts was wholly toward the unseen world. In fact, 

280 



The Bible as Intention 

I never knew a man who lived habitually nearer to God 
than he, who realized more truly the unseen, or was the 
subject of more vivid spiritual impressions. In the 
course of the previous summer he had said to a lady 
who was sufficiently intimate at the Abbey to visit 
him in his little private sitting room, 'I have been 
feeling of late that I am so at the edge of the grave 
that my thoughts go on to what is beyond ; and some- 
times I realize God's presence until it is too much for 
me. I feel I can bear no more while I am in the 
flesh.' "* 

And the intention that this sort of life shall survive 
is accompanied by a prescription of methods by which 
that intention is realized. There may be vagueness 
in these,, there may be defectivity, there may be an 
insufferable but permanent mystery, but there is also 
a core and rock of bedded truth, because this life is an 
intention of the Supreme Mind, "prompted by desire, 
guided by thought, and directed by will" Resistance 
cannot dissipate this intention into a wreck of vanish- 
ing points, nor dissolve its nuclei into a nebula and fog 
of unraveled suggestions, inconsequent links, and 
stumbling guesses. 

Says Cardinal Newman with profound heartiness, 
"The very idea of Christianity in its profession and 
history is something more than this ; it is a 'Revelatio 
revelata' ; it is a definite message from God to man 
distinctly conveyed by his chosen instruments, and to 
be received as such a message; and therefore to be 

1 Lives of Twelve Good Men, J. W. Burgon, B.D., vol. ii, p. 419. 
28l 



The World as Intention 

positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained 
as true, on the ground of its being divine, not as true 
on intrinsic grounds, not as probably true or partially 
true, but as absolutely certain knowledge, certain in a 
sense in which nothing else can be certain, because it 
comes from Him who neither can deceive nor be 
deceived." 1 

And yet higher and finer than dogma rises the 
intention of the Supreme Mind. It embraces the 
wide terranes of human history, it pierces the further- 
most recesses of creation, it bends upon the problem 
of granting life, in its highest and deepest sense, to 
all, the whole apparatus of an Infinite Mind, where 
desire is commensurate with eternity, thought coequal 
with omniscience, and will one with omnipotence. 
(See article IX, Articles of Intention, Chapter I.) 
In the Old Testament, from a human point of view, 
that intention of life sought its ends by sudden and 
supreme acts of will, in the New by an entrance of a 
divine Personality into the lives and thoughts and 
functions of men, which was itself a single and lasting 
act of love, and in the coming revelation by an act of 
thought it will complete its circuit with the widest 
diffusion of understanding. 

Intention exonerates God in the world and in the 
Bible, for, by the doctrine, that intention is infinitely 
beneficent, and though by resistance it has been de- 
feated or hidden to us, in the Supreme Mind it remains 
clear and invincible. 

1 Grammar of Assent, J. H. Newman. 
282 



The Bible as Intention 

NOTE TO CHAPTER IV 

In A System of Christian Doctrine, by Dr. J. A. Dorner, vol. 
ii, p. 198, this passage, alluded to in the foregoing chapter, 
is found: 

"The only right point of view is to conceive the divine and 
the human personality as cooperative in inspiration, and this in 
harmony with the fundamental law by which the human side is 
receptive to and capable of assimilating the divine. At the 
same time, of course, human receptiveness is not to be conceived 
as an empty vessel, in which the divine contents are merely 
deposited, man meanwhile remaining passive. But man is re- 
ceptive, even as he is filled in respect of his consciousness of 
self, of the world, and of God. For this reason man's in- 
dividuality and historical situation can least of all be regarded 
as immaterial. This specific character of the human spirit may 
therefore, on one hand, be considered as the plastic material upon 
which the Spirit of God comes in order to bring light and life 
to man. On the other hand, in the human spirit there exists 
already a longing for the blessing to be imparted, and the 
Spirit of God conditions himself in his working by this specific 
character of the man, for the purpose of making him a living 
bearer and organ of the divine Word destined to come to man- 
kind. By the insight thus vouchsafed to the inspired man into 
divine things, order, light, truth are brought into the chaos of 
human consciousness; and even what the inspired one knew 
before he now knows differently in its inner significance and 
order, so far as is requisite at the time, but at any rate knows 
in the sense that the real purport of every revelation is actually 
made over and becomes a pure communicable human possession. 
. . . Moreover, different degrees of inspiration are at the same 
time naturally implied, in proportion to the extent to which, in 
accordance with each stage of revelation, appropriation on the 
part of human consciousness takes place." Dr. Dorner also 
seems to think that the Spirit is not affected by the human 
medium — at least by that part of it "which is incidental and 
nonessential in reference to revelation." 

283 



CHAPTER V 
Conduct and Creed as Intention 

At the actual moment of the occupancy of the mind 
by an intention nothing else can exist there. It pre- 
cludes everything except such minor intentions as are 
involved in itself, as when we have a distributed or 
aggregate intention instanced above (Chapter I) ; 
but, what is more curious, it represents at the moment 
the individual, it is the fusion of feeling, will, and 
thought, and, as we cannot intend two different things 
at once, as that we intend to be brave and cowardly, 
good and bad, learned and ignorant, comfortable and 
uncomfortable? rich and poor, hot and cold, so, then, 
as there is nothing else in mind but feeling, willing, 
and thinking, an intention developed and governing 
the individual is all there is of him, at the moment, 
that is, it represents him ; his accountability as a sane 
or intelligent or moral being is determined at that 
moment by his intention. There does not seem to be 
any escape from this conclusion. For what else exists 
upon which responsibility or criticism or approval or 
blame can rest at the instant when an intention con- 
fines or possesses or covers the mind ? 

Certainly there is a subject intending, but the aspect 
of that subject, so far as it can be determined, or so 
far as it can be judged, is conformed to the combina- 

284 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

tion of its willing, feeling, and thinking, its intention, 
at that moment when we inspect it. Suppose this 
moment extended over a year or two years or many 
years or a lifetime; that is, suppose an intention rules 
the mind for that length of time to the exclusion of 
everything else, the ordinary routine of life, its physi- 
cal necessities and its necessary functions, excepted; 
then there certainly is nothing upon which we can 
base an opinion relative to that man but the form and 
contents of this intention. Furthermore, we judge or 
should judge that man by his intentions in idea, not 
his intentions in act; his acts are not to be considered 
in the question, provided always we can penetrate and 
describe his intention in idea. This seems a violent 
and seditious proposition; it is an important one, but 
there is nothing abominable or unworthy in it — noth- 
ing, in fact, which will not instantly be assented to by 
everyone upon a little explanation, and assented to as 
being unconsciously the law they guide their own 
judgments by, though not exactly so formally appre- 
hended. For in what sense are we responsible for 
our acts? Only in the sense that we intend them. 
The focus and court of moral criticism lies in the 
mind, not in the gesticulations or movements or 
paroxysms or propensions or appearances or sounds 
of the body. If a man says he intends to tell the 
truth and knowingly tells us a lie we do not blame 
him for the phenomenon of the deceptive utterance, 
but for the fact that he did not intend to tell the truth 
at all. If a man says he intends to tell the truth and 

285 



The World as Intention 

unknowingly tells us an untruth he is exempted by the 
most austere mentors from any moral censure. "A 
lie," say the authorities in moral science, "is an 
intention to deceive," and hence honesty is an inten- 
tion not to deceive, regardless in either case of what 
is said, its relations to facts, or its consequences. 

We appeal to acts as criteria of blame or praise be- 
cause they are to us the evidence of intention, or we 
at least so compute them, among sane people. But if 
with correct intentions we find our powers incapable 
of performing them, "our currents turn awry," and 
acts appear which are deleterious or imperfect or 
criminal, we believe an absolute and ideal judgment 
would limit the scope of its inquiry to the persistent 
substratum of correct intention which was antecedent 
to the act, which potentially, transcendent ally existed 
while the act was being committed, and which reas- 
serted itself after the completion of the act in the 
reverted attitude of contrition or penitence or self- 
reproach or regret. The ethical bearing of intention 
on* these grounds is evidently momentous. 

The view taken here of intention is practically 
recognized in every activity of man's, and to extend 
it to moral conduct is to bring the latter in direct 
alliance and analogy with all other conduct. We do 
not find fault with a blundering student who tries 
hard and means well; we compound our condemna- 
tion when we review his undeveloped or inadequate 
ability ; we do not blame ourselves when we fail ; "we 
did our best," and conscientious effort, whatever its 

286 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

shortcomings, its poverty in results, or its contemptible 
appearance, is estimated by the excellence of intention 
back of it, which maintained it and will maintain it. 
The ethical import of intention is, however, in the 
doctrine of intention we are publishing, more radical 
than this. To credit a man for his intentions and to 
palliate his offenses in deed because of weakness, con- 
genital or momentary, because of forgetfulness or 
physiological imperfections or strain, accidents of 
situation, etc., is the most common and natural be- 
nevolence and the most ordinary justice. But the 
earnestness of this doctrine of intention in this single 
section of its study is shown when it asserts that 
moral approval or disapproval cannot be exercised at 
all upon men, at least with any ulterior reference to 
their final accountability, except as they (men) have 
formed intentions, unless a potential, transcendental 
intention is discernible in and recognized by them 
which the individual has failed to develop, form, 
objectify, and subjectify. That is, we cannot con- 
demn a man for bad actions unless we find he has not 
formed intentions not to perform them or unless we 
can prove that he should have formed intentions not 
to perform them; unless we can show that a tran- 
scendental, potential (see Chapter I, article X) inten- 
tion was interwoven with his mental texture which 
should have been brought to the surface and rendered 
valid and potent, but which he has not so developed 
and advertised. Let us separate and illustrate these 
propositions; they will be found to systematize and 

287 



The World as Intention 

place on a philosophical basis some of our most natural 
and sagacious instincts — instincts, too, not fairly 
treated nor honorably acknowledged, and seldom or 
never referred to a rational discipline or system of 
judgments. 

Here is a man who intends to be a painter, has 
talent and opportunities and fails to properly employ 
either, loses his chances, neglects his offers, surrenders 
his time to some interfering and useless indulgence, 
and drops out of line, is forgotten and unknown. This 
man with an intention and with ability has collapsed 
because he did not and would not work. He comes 
properly under censure. Here, again, is a man who 
has little or no ability, is encompassed with natural 
difficulties and obstacles, forms no intention, can 
form none; neither desire, thought, nor will is 
properly stimulated, and the shrewdest study cannot 
discover how they can be. He is shipwrecked, but he 
is not blamable, unless it can be proven there was a 
potential intention recognizable by him as an agent. 
Here is a third man who has parts that distinctly mark 
him out for renown; he is educated enough to see 
this, perhaps does see it, but forms no intention, and 
brings nothing, to pass, is helpless and fruitless. He 
comes properly under censure, not because his inten- 
tion failed, but because he formed none at all. "The 
attempt and not the deed confounds us." Here is a 
man who -forms an intention, and strives long, faith- 
fully, and persistently to achieve it. He fails. Re- 
sistance, intentional and circumstantial, overthrows or 

288 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

retards him, but the mental purpose has not weakened 
or grown dim or lost its aim. Such a man has suc- 
ceeded. As we said in Chapter I (Articles of Inten- 
tion, article XIII), "an intention in idea fully or- 
ganized can never fail, because its very existence is its 
success. It always impresses the mind with exactly 
the force put into it, or, to put it more exactly, it 
always turns the mind by just the angle and with just 
the tension which is psychologically equivalent to its 
own strength. . . . Whether our acts are successful 
or not, whatever fruition they gather or superinduce, 
our intention in idea as a mental act is a valid and com- 
plete achievement. Its effect on our disposition and 
character has its impressive consequences, whether the 
acts to which it gives rise succeed or fail. It in itself, 
when completely formed, is an intact, matured mental 
compound or aggregation, and cannot be necessarily 
dissipated because the exterior conformation of cir- 
cumstances does not fit its requirements. It may 
slowly disappear, wane, or be abolished; but while it 
exists sheathed within the intangible, impenetrable 
folds and laminae of mind no storm of force or wreck 
of matter can touch or disperse it. The failure of an 
intention in idea consists in its not lasting, in its not 
setting the mind its way permanently." 

So far our thoughts have been directed to intentions 
of conduct, plans and ways of living, careers, places 
and postures of profit or renown, but what conclusions 
can we reach in intentions of creed ? Here also, by the 
doctrine we are presenting, intention is the touchstone 

289 



The World as Intention 

of judgment. What do you intend to believe, whither 
does desire, thought, and will drive you, or do they 
drive you at all — have you any intentions about belief 
at all ? Here the doctrine of intention rises with every 
energy it can control, and denounces and condemns 
and punishes the position and the positions of agnos- 
ticism which profess no intention of creed and delight 
in the profession. If men are to regard themselves as 
involved in any obligations as to right thinking, true 
assent, or convictions, they must be judged by their 
intentions in the matter, and they must evince inten- 
tion, and it must have the strength of a full intention ; 
in it desire, thought, and will (article III) must enter, 
for "the strength of intention is dependent on the 
amount and kind of will involved, and this again is 
conditioned on the vividness and quantity of desire 
which prompts the intention, and, in a full intention, 
on the accuracy and thoroughness of intellectual fore- 
sight'' (article IX, which the reader should re-read). 
In the doctrine there is no escape from this conclusion, 
and its consequences are important. But observe, the 
force of condemnation or of excuse is laid upon the 
intention, not upon its success, just as it is in conduct, 
as it is in the intention of God in the world and in the 
Bible. Defectivity through resistance comes in, of 
course, but the intention is defectless. It remains, a 
defiant, an indestructible, nucleus. 

When Priestley after the isolation of oxygen still 
clung to the theory of Phlogiston, though his own dis- 
covery in the hands of Lavoisier led to the first com- 

290 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

plete chemical philosophy, his intention to believe the 
truth was doubtless earnest and ardent, and, unless 
private motives of vanity or the impulses of stubborn- 
ness dulled or perverted it, his scientific honesty is to 
be estimated by his intention. 

Now, article VII of the Articles of Intention 
(Chapter I) says: "Intentions may be latent or mani- 
fest; that is, they may remain in an embryonic state 
undeveloped and unrealized, or they may assume a 
veritable reality," and in article X, on the growth of 
intention, we find that ' 'there is intention in poten- 
tiality — transcendental intentions — when a mind or 
temperament appears in which, while we study it, no 
conscious disturbance or movement has occurred, but 
of which we can say with absolute certainty, under 
such conditions, incitements, experiences, or solicita- 
tions, such and such intentions must arise. There are 
written invisible tendencies in all of us that form the 
infallible guides for such predictions, and they need 
not be regarded as the peculiar accompaniments of 
rare natures. All men love flattery, power, wealth, 
position, fame, applause, and it presupposes no excep- 
tional powers of divination to foretell that where these 
appear attainable men will form intentions to secure 
them, through the invincible predisposition — the 
potential intentionalities — of their minds. And it is 
also certain that in the great majority of cases they 
will employ similar instrumentalities, perform similar 
acts, and pursue them with similar tenacity and 
earnestness. The variety of physical accidents which 

291 



The World as Intention 

diversify life, and the heterogeneous assemblage of 
duties and services in life, will make the concrete ex- 
pression of each man's life somewhat different from 
that of his neighbor ; but their intentions in their more 
abstract forms will be alike, and we shall dwell upon 
the fact with some interest hereafter that the intention 
of all living is life itself." 

We have seen that life is the intention of the world, 
of the Bible, but life as an intention appears in four- 
fold more brilliancy in man, for he is encompassed in 
those intentions as their flower and fruit, and he him- 
self has become independently centered as an intending 
Being, and as a life-intending Being. Then the latent, 
the potential, transcendental intention of man is life 
in its widest, deepest, highest sense, as though, born 
into the world as the very insignia of life, we move 
onward to a life of which that insignia is but the 
backward-thrown shadow. 

Quoting Principal Shairp, "The end or the good for 
man is a vivid consciousness of life, according to its 
highest excellence, or in the exercise of its highest 
powers. Sir Alexander Grant, in his very able disser- 
tation on kvepyeia, shows, with great felicity, how 
Aristotle regarded man's chief good as 'nothing ex- 
ternal to him, but as existing in man and for man; 
existing in the evocation, the vividness, and the frui- 
tion of his powers. It is the conscious vitality of the 
life and the mind in the exercise of its highest facul- 
ties. This, however, not as a permanent condition, 
but one that arises in us, oftenest like a thrill of joy, 

292 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

a momentary intuition. Were it abiding we should 
be as God.' "* 

Thus humanity represents itself an intention; it is 
the embodied presentation of many forms of life, it 
surmounts and justifies the arduous progress of all 
other forms of life up to itself ; and as itself life to be 
admired in its highest and deepest aspects, in its 
physique, mentality, and psychology, it must be inter- 
preted by its conduct and by its creed. Or, more 
directly, it is intended by the Supreme Mind, the 
Author of life (see Chapter II), that man shall have 
a conduct and a creed, and it is the transcendental in- 
tention of men as individuals to conform to that inten- 
tion. The proof of this is rather striking ; in reference 
to conduct it is conscience, and in reference to creed it 
is the instinct of religion. 

By conscience we mean the moral consciousness, 
the sense of right and wrong, the moral sense, the 
moral feeling, the moral law, or whatever other rela- 
tion of the subject has been embodied in a word. For 
we learn from Dr. Dorner that conscience as a theo- 
logical term has been a subject of dissection and dis- 
pute "as to whether it is most allied to knowledge, 
will, or feeling; as to the relation which conscience 
holds to religion, as to whether it merely takes cog- 
nizance of past acts, and has therefore only critical or 
judicial functions to discharge, or whether it is legis- 
lative as well;" 2 and, further, he says conscience is 



1 Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, J. C Shairp, p. 292. 
3 System of Christian Ethics, A. Dorner. 

293 



The World as Intention 

"not to be identified with the moral consciousness in 
general," nor is it properly "moral feeling.' , It is 
sufficient for the broad and plain purposes of this 
essay to make conscience the judge and formulator of 
conduct. It thus represents practically the moral law, 
whether Spencer's contention is right or not that the 
moral law "is the law of the perfect man — is the 
formula of ideal conduct — is the statement in all 
cases of that which should be, and cannot recognize in 
its propositions any elements implying existence of 
that which should not be." It is similarly the ex- 
pression of the moral sense, the moral consciousness, 
the sense of right and wrong, moral feeling, for if 
there was no conscience these qualities or attributes 
would be but vague speculations without certainty and 
without control. But, by the doctrine, conscience 
publishes the latent, the transcendental, the potential 
intention in man so far as it can be discovered in con- 
duct. In other words, man's intention in conduct is 
the approval of his conscience, because conscience is 
the index of the intention of the Supreme Mind as 
regards man, and that intention must be what it is in 
the world and in the revelation, namely, life. 

And herein manifestly we discern the entrance of 
the principle of defectivity and the secular rise of in- 
tention. We beg to consider the last first, as introduc- 
tory to the former. If conscience publishes the poten- 
tial intention in man it publishes it more clearly and 
more fairly as the man grows as a person and as a 
race, and therein we see the secular rise of this inten- 

294 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

tion. The conscience of the savage, of the criminal 
immured in misery, of the boy, is not the conscience 
of the European, of the good citizen, of the man. 
This is well recognized. The judicious Dorner de- 
votes a section in his System of Christian Ethics to 
"Stages of Conscience," and he discovers that there 
are three: first, when moral consciousness is not yet 
concrete moral knowledge — when it takes the form of 
moral feeling and moral sense and is only conscience 
in essence; second, when with this basis still preserved 
advance is made to concrete moral material, partly 
through the influence of moral authorities, and partly 
through man's growing knowledge of himself and of 
the world; third, when the concrete moral knowledge 
of the second is combined with the elementary, funda- 
mental moral knowledge of the first. And, to turn 
to a very different phase and temperament of thought, 
we find Spencer saying: "At an earlier stage egoistic 
competition, first reaching a compromise such that 
each claims no more than his equitable share, after- 
ward rises to a conciliation such that each insists on 
the taking of equitable shares by others; so, at the 
latest, altruistic competition, first reaching a compro- 
mise under which each restrains himself from taking 
an undue share of altruistic satisfaction, eventually 
rises to a conciliation under which each takes care that 
others shall have their opportunities for altruistic 
satisfactions — the highest altruism being that which 
ministers not to the egoistic satisfactions of others 
only, but also to their altruistic satisfactions. 

295 



The World as Intention 

"Far off as seems such a state, yet every one of the 
factors counted on to produce it may already be traced 
in operation among those of highest natures. What 
now in them is occasional and feeble may be expected 
with further evolution to become habitual and strong; 
and what now characterizes the exceptionally high 
may be expected eventually to characterize all. For 
that which the best human nature is capable of is 
within the reach of human nature at large" (The 
Data of Ethics). 

Conscience may be viewed as an implanted function 
witnessing always to an intention and revealing that 
intention in stronger and more generous lights as 
education, revelation, self-culture, and enlightenment 
nourish its powers and spread its sympathies. Man's 
intention in conduct follows this development, and we 
see the wide range of contrast between different ages, 
different races, and different climes, according to the 
scale represented in each to which desire, thought, and 
feeling have attained. For as all intention springs 
from these, all intention rises with them and is strong 
as they are strong and various as they are various. 
(See article IX, Articles of Intention, Chapter I.) 
And in what way conscience is stimulated and inten- 
tion improved has been indicated in article X (Articles 
of Intention), on the rise of intention, where we simply 
reviewed the psychological aspects of its chronological 
growth. But these aspects referred to the phases of 
an individual mind are true, we think, of that broader 
process by which intention in conduct becomes more 

296 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

and more admirable as we become "the heir of all the 
ages in the foremost files of time." We there laid 
stress upon thought, saying: "Thought soon invests 
the whole subject, penetrates it, illuminates it, and 
controls it. This is the critical moment in the growth 
of intention. Thought intensifies desire, it reproduces 
the objects of desire more and more clearly, it points 
out the means of obtaining satisfaction, it justifies, 
explains, and exhilarates desire. ... In the growth 
of intention thinking comes in with absorbing interest 
and envelops the mind in the last formative stage of 
the intention. When the desire is recognized, so to 
say, summoned and stamped as current and valid, 
then thought is implicated, and its action is that of 
intensification." Is not this the history of just re- 
forms, great progressive movements, and beneficent 
and high-minded ameliorations of manners and cus- 
toms? In short, does it not account for the secular 
rise of intention in conduct? As thought has entered 
more and more into the universal texture of living, 
men have respected the rights of their fellow men, 
have given them their rights, and have repudiated and 
overturned the wretched sophistries and hateful insti- 
tutions of brutes and tyrants. Thought has illumined 
the deeper and best things in Christianity, and has 
aided in the reiteration of its loftiest commands. 
Thought has purified and elevated our emotional 
nature and widened the horizon and increased the 
number of our ethical efforts. Thus the potential in- 
tention in humanity of right conduct has been recog- 

297 



The World as Intention 

nized by thought and made more and more actual, 
growing larger toward some higher destiny of higher 
life. 

The critical inquiry in this connection is, how far 
are men responsible for the fulfillment of this potential 
intention in conduct? For it is our human predica- 
ment that we are made the agents of the intention of 
the Supreme Mind, although that agency is assisted 
by the declaration of similar intentions in nature and 
in the Bible, and has instituted its own witness in us 
in conscience and in the instinct of religion. The 
answer from the considerations offered at the begin- 
ning of this chapter is that so far as men do not 
recognize or realize, because they cannot, the potential 
intention, and do not, in consequence, incorporate it 
in their own intentions either as an intention in idea 
or in act (see Articles of Intention, article X, Chapter 
I), they escape condemnation. So far as men recog- 
nize or realize it, and effectually make it their own, 
but fail, through resistance, to complete it, they escape 
condemnation if they evince the actual force of 
at least their mental attitude. And this evidence is 
shown in the familiar aspects of regret, repentance, 
contrition, self-reproach, and sorrow. So far as men 
recognize or realize the enveloping intention of human 
existence in conduct but reject or pervert or minimize 
it they suffer condemnation. The illustration of these 
positions might be indefinitely prolonged and lead us 
into the most exquisite discriminations in the study of 
characters, opportunities, motives, mental and actual 

298 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

intentions. Practically the theater and fiction are con- 
stantly engaged in presenting to our judgment the 
intricate relations of human beings to their fellows, 
to their surroundings, indeed, in some subtle phases 
of introspection, to themselves. Think of Daudet's 
Jack, of Dickens's Carton, of George Eliot's Maggie 
Tolliver, of the young man in the Peau de Chagrin, 
of Frou Frou, of the people in Ibsen's Doll-House, 
of Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. 

How delicate and insecure are opinions about our 
fellow being's conduct, and how beneficent that philan- 
thropy which never judges! We have been glancing 
in previous chapters at the action of the principle of 
defectivity, which, introduced by resistance, has ob- 
scured the intention of the Supreme Mind in nature 
and in revelation. Resistance meets the same inten- 
tion in man, and produces the widest and most vivid 
development of this same principle. If intention 
exonerates God in nature and the Bible it also ex- 
onerates man in conduct so far as it exists or can 
exist in him as an "attitude of mind prompted by 
desire, guided by thought, and directed by will." By 
some these conclusions may be stigmatized as Jesuit- 
ism, and of the language of Dorner quoted it may be 
said that it "would obliterate the distinction between 
good and evil in everything that is concrete, whereas 
the good has no more than a mere Docetic existence 
when disjoined from the concrete." But this is an 
inadmissible stricture. There is no confusion in our 
estimates of the relative worth and value of different 

299 



The World as Intention 

lives according as they have or have not set before us 
exemplary illustrations of goodness, nobility, and 
sweetness, according as they have or have not spread 
out in acts the high intention of the best, deepest, and 
widest life, written in man by the Supreme Mind, and 
made each man's intention by his individual works. 
All that the doctrine asserts is that condemnation is 
apportioned as intelligent intention in idea can be seen 
in men, who are properly gifted and properly placed 
so as to conceive it, whether by resistances they cannot 
overcome it or not, and so fail to make the intention 
in idea commensurately reflected in acts. This is no 
apostleship of immorality, or a crusade against good 
manners and civilized decency. It, however, raises 
our view as to the loftiness of mental life and enters 
in behind the skin and bone of men to inspect the 
arrangement of that mysterious room where feeling, 
will, and thinking plot and strive. But consider too 
how important the consequences are which flow from 
the doctrine of intention. It turns our thoughts to 
the overshadowing interest, importance, and beauty 
of our mental attitudes. It accents an idea which this 
age is disinclined to make much of, namely, the effec- 
tual, practical usefulness of right thought, cultivated 
emotion, trained will, the elements of vital or life- 
giving intention. And the reflections upon intention 
in articles VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X (Chapter I) are 
full of practical suggestiveness as to the incipiency, 
establishment, and vitality of our intentions. In ac- 
cordance with the deepest scientific feeling Dr. Kedney 

300 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

has written : "If a right moral choice has been made, 
and a universal end adopted to rule the plan of life, 
then the involuntary tendencies harmonizing with it 
become strengthened, and the opposing ones weakened 
and by degrees excluded. Such synthesis of tenden- 
cies transmitted to offspring places them upon a 
vantage ground, and the movement is begun toward 
recovery. This recovery consists in the absolute ex- 
tinguishment of all internal hostility, and the attain- 
ment, step by step, of pure spontaneity; for which is 
implied also the attainment of such moral strength 
and spiritual fiber as can maintain the moral subject 
without deflection, and ultimately without assault in 
its harmony and perfection." 1 

We have adverted to resistance and the principle of 
defectivity in conduct. They scarcely need illustra- 
tions. They are so plentiful that our eye cast up and 
down a crowded street or over the columns of a news- 
paper shows us both. The more critical and peculiar 
question as to whether that resistance is both circum- 
stantial and intentional is not so readily answered. 
The doctrine has pointed out resistance in the world 
whence its defectivity, and has claimed that it is par- 
tially intentional, if it may not be claimed that it is 
wholly so, intentional resistance underlying all circum- 
stantial resistance. In the Bible we pointed out re- 
sistance, whence its defectivity, and the doctrine is 
not unwilling to concede that intentional resistance is 
also found there. 

1 Christian Doctrine and its Rationality Vindicated, J. S. Kedney, p. 43. 

30I 



The World as Intention 

But does the doctrine affirm a sinister and omni- 
present counter design in man's life that struggles 
against that intention of the Supreme Mind, which 
intends life, and hence in its malignant or canceling 
activity means death? We know of the cultivated 
amusement at the thought of Satan, and are acquainted 
with the antiquarian researches into the "historic 
evolution of the devil." But the doctrine of intention 
is too stern and logical to forget its message because 
it offends either the jester or the antiquarian, or be- 
cause for a space it moves apart from the unhealthy 
complacency of scientific optimism. 

Man is a factor, a lasting and terminal phenomenon, 
in the creation. If resistance strains its forces against 
a benign intention in the world its ultimate purposes 
must be the infliction of defeat upon the highest prod- 
uct of that intention. Its recognition in the world 
involves its presence, even if mediately and by succes- 
sion, in the arena of man's mind and body. Take it 
how you will, the thought is full of wonder. We are 
the hosts of two intentions, one structurally com- 
mingled with us as part of the world, the other de- 
structively attendant upon the first. Is there proof of 
this? We have seen in article V that intentional re- 
sistance may be determined by two methods : first, the 
metric method, and, second, the method of counter 
intention. By the first should be shown that tendencies 
which man can or ought to suppress become irre- 
pressible; by the second, that tendencies which man 
neither resists nor resuscitates rise up as it were un- 

302 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

bidden. The difficulty of proving this as regards per- 
sons lies in the untrustworthiness, generally from ex- 
aggeration, of individual experiences and in the 
varying degrees of self-control possessed or exercised 
by different people. Saint Augustine in his Confes- 
sions seems to present the picture of a man heartily 
desirous of changing his life, and a man strongly 
made, but his struggles are long, frequent, painful, and 
fruitless. The illustration used by us to portray in- 
tentional resistance, of a heavy door against which we 
push and it does not move, though usually our strength 
is quite sufficient to overcome its inert (circumstan- 
tial) resistance, and of the same door moving toward 
us when we stand aside, applies to the recurring de- 
scriptions in that excited work of desires persisting 
triumphantly when fought against and arising when 
uncalled. The real obstruction here lies in the impos- 
sibility of clearly estimating the physiological factor. 
But any profound view of the doctrine of intention 
transfers this question to those indefinite ages when 
mind and body were growing together beneath the 
intentions of life and death, when intentional resistance 
incorporated or effected the entrance of its representa- 
tives in both psychology and physiology to be per- 
petuated to our time under the counters of inherited 
tastes and necessary functions. There are also, of 
course, specifically religious views of this question, 
under the doctrine, by which intention in conduct is 
assisted by practical methods and positive inter- 
position. 

303 



The World as Intention 

At any rate, it substantiates these positions to ac- 
knowledge with Mr. Lilly that "Facts unfortunately 
are against the optimist view of humanity, and not 
only external but internal facts. The sense of moral 
imperfection is as much a fact of our nature as is the 
sense of ignorance; and, as it is the wisest who feel 
most keenly the limitations of their knowledge, so it 
is the best who are most sensitively conscious of an 
evil element innate in them. The assertion that 'the 
base in man' is 'the fruit of bad education and of bad 
institutions' is a perfectly arbitrary and crude hy- 
pothesis. There is an overwhelming mass of proof 
that the radix mail is within. External influences may 
develop or repress it; but it is always there. We may 
give what account of it we please, or we may put aside 
as untenable any account that can be given of it. But, 
apart from all theories, the fact remains that there is 
in all of us something of 'the ape and tiger' which is 
not in the least cast out by ignoring or denying it." 1 

In article IV (Chapter I) we spoke of intention put- 
ting on "an innumerable host of lesser shades of dif- 
ference which are derived from the personal attributes 
of the individual," and in article VI (Chapter I) we 
said that "intentions may be simple or compound, and 
one intention may open a path of indefinite duration 
every step of which can only be gained by a new act 
of will, which act may be diversely and infinitely 
varied with every repetition." So modifying the 
potential intention in conduct enter in the subordinate 

1 Chapters on European History, W. S. Lilly. 
304 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

vagaries of life intentions which men according to 
temperament, position, and environment are compelled 
to make. And we know that position, temperament, 
and environment may conceal the latent transcendental 
intention so that it is never discovered ; in other words, 
conscience may be unnurtured and feeble or quite hyp- 
notized. Or the transcendental intention recognized 
may become little more than an intention in idea in 
any individual man, and never an intention in act. 
He may intend to act rightly, and his intention may 
have a real mental strength, yet its objective mani- 
festations be incomparably poor. His judgment by 
the Supreme Mind will be based upon the real strength 
of his intention in idea. The ability of men to form 
strong intentions (see article IX, Chapter I) varies 
indefinitely and is indefinitely contrasted in its arti- 
ficial improvement by education. So, finally, in all 
these ways which are familiar thoughts to everyone 
the defectivity of intention in conduct is commen- 
surate with resistance — circumstantial and intentional 
— and the ethical estimate of conduct will be based 
upon the sincerity of intention. The secular rise of 
intention should be seen in the approximation of the 
universal conduct to the highest ideal of conduct 
which can be implied in the transcendental intention 
of life in its highest sense, and which is resident and 
implicated in man, as the intention of twining is de- 
scried in a pea plant or of swimming in a fish. We 
believe this secular rise is shown, at least to-day, in a 
wider distribution of good intentions and a more gen- 

305 



The World as Intention 

eral elevation and perspicuity in the people. In fixing 
this conclusion we must look at a wide range of time 
and places. As a disease may be considered as in- 
creasing, if only its local ravages are seen, when the 
real extent of its activity has greatly abated in the 
whole world, so we may think that human nature is 
deteriorating if we strain our eyes to hunt up local 
scandals, temporary irregularities, and venial sins. 
There are some reflections connected with the sorts of 
life toward which intention can be directed, as 
physical, mental, and spiritual, and we know that both 
in ages, races, and in men these different aspects have 
assumed separate preeminence to the suppression of 
the rest. But the transcendental intention of life in 
man means the rational and consolidated beauty of 
all. 1 

Intention in Creed 

The doctrine of intention also teaches that it is 
intended by the Supreme Mind that men shall have a 
creed; that there is a transcendental intention written 
in man that he shall believe, and his belief shall also 
be administrative to life in its highest and deepest and 
widest sense. And the evidence is the instinct of re- 
ligion. It will be objected that the instinct of religion is 
not a human constant, that races are found without it, 

1 It may be observed in passing that the doctrine of intention affords an 
attractive escape from the irrepressible conflict between the advocates of a 
"mora^ sense" and those who contend it is only the condensed and acquired 
expression of a pursuit, itself slowly developed, for the "greatest happiness of 
the greatest number." For by the doctrine the intention of conduct, as con- 
ducive to life, is made both a constitutional element and an empirical result. 
As a constitutional element it is imbedded in the tissues of men, though as an 
empirical result its germinal expansion and fruitfulness may be consequent 
upon centuries of trial, experiment, and instruction. 

306 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

and that men to-day are doing without it. This is a 
narrow and ineffective pretension. Races may or may 
not have religious instinct, many of them seem scarcely 
to have any, but it arises by a natural growth the 
moment we pass from an inchoate primordial magma 
of mind to the higher differentiations of the same. As 
to that there can be no question, and as to men doing 
without it that experiment has not gone far enough 
for purposes of proof. If we are to trust the observa- 
tions of contemporaneous writers the effort or wish 
to live without religion in the beginning of the last cen- 
tury in France was not conspicuously successful. In 
the rich and attractive pages of Mr. Lilly we read 
these words of Alfred de Musset descriptive of this 
period : "The principle of death descended coldly and 
without violent shock from the region of the intellect 
to the very depths of our being. We had not even 
enthusiasm for evil. We had but the abnegation of 
good, and insensibility in the place of despair. So that 
the rich said to themselves, There is nothing true but 
riches : all the rest is a dream : let us enjoy ourselves 
and die. Those of slender fortune said to themselves, 
There is nothing true but forgetf ulness : all the rest is 
a dream : let us forget and die. And the poor said to 
themselves, There is nothing true but misery: all the 
rest is a dream : let us blaspheme and die." 

Of the same day Heine said: "The old religion is 
dead down to the roots: more, it has fallen into dis- 
solution. The majority des Frangais will not endure 
further talk of this lifeless corpse and apply a handker- 

307 



The World as Intention 

chief to the nose when there is question of the church," 
from which it came about that "morality, which is 
nothing but religion grafted into the character and 
habits of a people, has thus lost all its vital roots, and 
now, sickly and withered, holds by the dry poles of 
reason, which have been planted, instead of religion, 
to support it. But this poor and pitiful morality, 
without religious roots, and resting only on reason, 
obtains no decent measure of respect here." And of 
these men Lilly says they "felt their age down to the 
bottom of their souls." 

The doctrine, however, rests upon man the respon- 
sibility of belief , and it expects in his response to his 
religious instinct that he will intend to believe rightly, 
to think rightly, or, to use a greatly abused word, that 
he will be orthodox, a word which Dr. Briggs has 
placed on a pedestal of dignity and truth. He says : 
"Orthodoxy is right thinking about the Christian re- 
ligion: not that orthodoxy consists only in thinking, 
but that right thinking involves right teaching and 
right acting." 

But where is there any guide to such an intention? 
Conscience is not. There is no invisible mentor who 
determines for us the exact outlines of faith or even 
the nucleus of faith. But there is a revelation. De- 
fective or not, there is an apparition of a life-giving 
faith in the Bible, for, ethnologically made and re- 
lated as we are by history and by disposition, the 
Bible is the only possible verba scrip ta which will help 
us. Neither is it difficult to discover what we are in- 

308 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

tended to believe in that revelation. It is a secondary 
matter whether we think we can believe what that 
intention implies or whether we care to associate it in 
a particular way with certain relative dogmas and 
irrelative ceremonies. 1 The Bible could not be re- 
garded in any way successful if its main mission was 
not plain. Its defectivity we have adverted to and 
discussed, the rise of intention seen in it we have em- 
phasized, but neither defectivity nor rise can obscure 
to any ingenuous and unsophisticated mind the 
simple burden of its remarkable utterances. The end 
and climax of the Bible, its intention and consumma- 
tion, is Christ. And it is Christ as it presents him, 
not as Socinus or Arius or Manes or Calvin presents 
him. Herein, of course, rest the current difficulties 
of belief. The involution of the supernatural (see 
Prolegomena) in the story of Christ is the stumbling- 
block and the irreducible kernel of hardship. Make 
Christ a commonplace, or in any conceivable way 
transfer him from a place in a divine genealogy as a 
literal fact in that genealogy, and the scheme of Chris- 
tian faith seems recommended. Now, as regards the 
doctrine of intention we are here only concerned with 
finding out what the Bible as a revelation intends us 
to believe, and so far as sane and thinking men can 
understand language, or language itself expresses an 



1 It was the judgment of the famous thinker Dean Mansel that " while the 
author of the Bampton Lectures denies man's ability by his own unassisted 
reason to find out God, he insists that from God's revelation of himself in the 
Scriptures man has been favored with a vast amount of direct information 
concerning the great Creator which he is fully competent, if he be willing, to 
embrace ' ' (Burgon) . 

309 



The World as Intention 

intelligible conception, the word of the Bible says that 
Christ was divine literally. Our intention in creed 
should be, then, to believe this; we may from study, 
thought, and denominational alliance believe many 
other things, and this creed itself involves and in- 
closes many other items and subordinate parts, 1 but 
the broad outline of our intention should be about this, 
and in it, as in all intentions, feeling, will, and thought 
should be concentrated. Intention in creed is, how- 
ever, we think, preeminently an intention of thinking. 
(See article III, Chapter I.) Certainly, in regard to 
Christian faith, that thinking is largely done by proxy, 
it is authority, some one else's thought, that we are 
led by, but such a concession does not change a 
particle our contention. Men are Christians through 
fear (and it is well they are), through laziness, per- 
haps, through emotional languor, and through emo- 
tional excitement, but somewhere and in some men it 
is thinking which establishes creed, for nothing else 
can. Cardinal Newman has instructively said, "Senti- 
ment, whether imagination or emotional, falls back 
upon the intellect for its stay, when sense cannot be 
called into exercise ; and it is in this way that devotion 
falls back upon dogma." 

But all thinking is not equally good, and all minds 



1 Cardinal Newman says (Grammar of Assent) "It stands to reason that all 
of us, learned and unlearned, are bound to believe the whole revealed doctrine 
in all its parts and in all that it implies, according -as portion after portion is 
brought home to our conscience as belonging to it; and it also stands to reason 
that a doctrine so deep and so various as the revealed depositum of faith can- 
not be brought home to us and made our own all at once. No mind, however 
large, however penetrating, can directly and fully by one act understand any one 
truth, however simple." 

3IO 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

are not equally clear, subtle, or persistent, or some 
minds are analytical and skeptical by nature or by 
rearing, and their intention in creed becomes reduced 
or discountenanced or overthrown. It either halts or 
retreats; resistance, circumstantial — who may not say 
intentional? — enters, and defectivity of intention at 
once blurs and discredits our efforts. Now, the im- 
portant conclusion appears that, as it is the intention 
of the Supreme Mind that we shall believe the in- 
superably clear word of the Revelation — otherwise 
ex hypothesi the revelation is senseless or it is not a 
revelation — then our intention in creed should be to 
maintain that belief by desire, by will, by thought, 
though it is difficult, though it practically escape us 
and we disbelieve, though it rise up in accusation 
against us, and justify itself by proof that we did not 
believe when we said we did. The intention to believe 
must remain. Back of doubts, back of doubting, back 
of silence, back of apostasy even, the intention to 
believe must be fiercely kept alive or kept alive some- 
how. And mark, if this be done, the instinct of 
religion, which we claimed to be the evidence of an 
intention in creed (as conscience is the evidence of an 
intention in conduct), will be revived, and our inten- 
tion will rise } will be reinstated, indemnified, and made 
rigid. This is the doctrine, and it is scientifically just. 
Further, we shall be judged by the Supreme Mind by 
our intention, not by our doubts, by our intention in 
idea, for therein, as in all intention, rests the saving 
essence of desire. 

3ii 



The World as Intention 

In article XIII (Chapter I) we spoke of the failure 
of intention, and we said that though intention in act 
be missing the prevalence of an intention in idea had 
its benign result. Our words were that "an intention 
in idea fully organized can never fail, because its very 
existence is its success. It always impresses the mind 
with exactly the force put into it, or, to put it more 
exactly, it always turns the mind by just the angle 
and with just the tension which is psychologically 
equivalent to its own strength. . . . Whether our. 
acts [in creed, of course, a real or living assent] are 
successful or not, whatever fruition they gather or 
superinduce, our intention in idea as a mental act is a 
valid and complete achievement. Its effect on our 
disposition and character has its impressive conse- 
quences, whether the acts to which it gives rise suc- 
ceed or fail. It in itself, when completely formed, is 
an intact, matured mental compound or aggregation, 
and cannot be necessarily dissipated because the ex- 
terior conformation of circumstances does not fit its re- 
quirements. It may slowly disappear, wane, or be 
abolished; but while it exists sheathed within the in- 
tangible, impenetrable folds and laminae of mind no 
storm of force or wreck of matter can touch or dis- 
perse it. The failure of an intention in idea consists 
in its not lasting, in its not setting the mind its way 
permanently." 

To-day it is hardly customary for men to regret 
their doubts, they seem rather joyous over them, and 
sometimes pin them on their sleeves for "daws to peck 

312 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

at." It is certainly curious to read the remorse of 
Saint Augustine over his Manichseism; it rivals his 
contrition over his sin. "What profited me, then," he 
says, "my nimble wit in those sciences and all those 
most knotty volumes, unraveled by me without aid 
from human instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and 
with such sacrilegious shamefulness, in the doctrine 
of piety?" This contortion and excitement seem 
hardly necessary, and yet they witness to a sublime 
earnestness of intention to have and hold the truth. 
Pascal has said, "He who doubts but seeks not to 
have his doubts removed is at once the most criminal 
and the most unhappy of mortals. If, together with 
this, he is tranquil and self-satisfied, if he be vain of 
his tranquillity, or makes his state a topic of mirth and 
self-gratulation, I have not words to describe so in- 
sane a creature." These words are ideally true, if in 
all the intention of the Supreme Mind, whether in the 
world, in the Bible, in conduct, or in creed, life in its 
highest, deepest, widest sense is somehow implicated 
and received. 

But defectivity of intention in creed appears not 
only in our inability to hold with satisfaction the main 
projects and statements of revelation, but in the vary- 
ing accretions of fancy which have been added to them, 
and in the perplexities of theological dogmatism. 
Many people believe in angels with wings, though it 
is a crude and puerile artistic symbol ; many have be- 
lieved, and may to-day, in a devil with horns and a 
tail, possibly green at that; whatever the intentional 

313 



The World as Intention 

resistance we have so often considered represents, it 
must be something strangely at variance with a mas- 
querading clown. But in the effort to limit and define 
creed many things have been introduced into de- 
nominational faith, whether Catholic or Protestant, 
which will always remain dubious and unsettled. 
And in the very throes of improved definition, in the 
specific act of explanation, we may commit a crime 
against faith by clouding our atmosphere with the 
motes and atoms of verbal infelicities. Words of 
Saint Hilary quoted by Mr. Lilly may be appropri- 
ately repeated : "We are compelled to do what is not 
permitted : to scale the lofty peaks ; to express the in-, 
expressible; to presume beyond what is given to us. 
Instead of accomplishing by faith alone what had 
been commanded us, we are compelled to elevate our 
humble language to the point of making it tell forth 
the ineffable, and are enforced to fault, by the fault of 
others, so that what should have remained shrouded in 
the religion of souls, is exposed to the peril of human 
language." 1 

Yet the intention in creed is perpetually reasserted, 
and men return with a fated insistency to the task of 
determining their beliefs. Books succeed books, and 
thinkers thinkers in the unceasing chase after a 
tolerable and stable groundwork of faith. It is well 
they do, perhaps ; we are intentionally made to be be- 
lievers, and agnosticism is in esse the belief in no 

1 What is Left of Christianity, W. S. Lilly. The Nineteenth Century, August, 
1888, No. 138. 

314 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

belief; its professors cannot escape subscription to a 
dogma at the very moment they attempt to reject all 
dogma, but agnosticism is an outrage on human 
nature nevertheless, and a flat subversion of that in- 
tention we are here reviewing, an intention justified 
by the instinct of religion, and which no civilization 
can kill. 

So the purification of creed goes on, and so we en- 
counter the secular rise of intention in creed as we 
have met it in conduct. True, the elements cannot be 
deserted, or should not be, so far as they are read in 
the revelation, but a more delicate sense of their 
meanings, a more facile interpretation of their forms, 
a sensible broadening of their application, a discreet 
separation of their parts, and a wise neglect of their 
mere appurtenances and accessories has yearly, and 
age by age, marked the development and improve- 
ment of creeds. The creed of the best Christianity 
to-day is, we think, better than the creed of the best 
Christianity which has gone before; it may not, in- 
deed, cannot, be deeper, but it is more illuminated and 
freer, more reasonable and safer. Zeal and candor 
may have disappeared, and the gigantic piety of the 
earlier men may now be unmatched, but creeds are 
better, sweeter, and probably more true. There may 
not be many like Mother Margaret M. Hallahan, of 
whom Cardinal Newman says (Grammar of Assent), 
"Her firm faith was so vivid in its character that it 
was almost like an intuition of the entire prospect of 
revealed truth. Let an error against faith be concealed 

315 



The World as Intention 

under expressions however abstruse, and her sure in- 
stinct found it out." Certainly we are here presented 
with a mind theologically recondite, and through the 
practices of a fostering religious life possibly in- 
fluenced to a degree of jealous acerbity. This sort of 
exacting faith cannot to-day be always expected; the 
times are too obscure, and outrages on credulity are 
too well remembered and too mercilessly exposed. 
Max Muller says : "Who, if he is honest toward him- 
self, could say that the religion of his manhood was 
the same as that of his childhood, or the religion of 
his old age the same as the religion of his manhood ?" 
But let us not deserve the reproach uttered by Car- 
dinal Newman, that "men are too well inclined to sit 
at home, instead of stirring themselves to inquire 
whether a revelation has been given; they expect its 
evidences to come to them without their trouble; they 
act not as suppliants, but as judges." 

It will be a gloomy day for the best results of human 
life when the intention to believe is darkened com- 
pletely, as it seems to us to-day gloomy that in quarters 
it has been effectually weakened, weakened too in 
many cases by ignorance, obstinacy, and stupor. Of 
necessity there are lapses in periods of intention in 
creed, as in conduct. In working out the intention in 
the world we saw instances of retrograde development, 
and we tried to fasten upon them a significance of 
intentional resistance to the will of the Supreme Mind. 
Such retrogression is seen in the history of religions 
and of societies, but the genius of an intention, 

316 



Conduct and Creed as Intention 

directed toward and compassing life in its deepest, 
highest, and widest sense in creed and conduct, is 
irrepressible, and emerges renovated and progressive 
at each eclipse. 

It is notorious to-day that people are striving after 
common sense in religion, after a certain sentimental 
or mechanical obviousness, by which the faculty of 
faith is nearly paralyzed from disuse, and the preter- 
natural sanctions of religion exchanged for statements 
referable to the touchstone of everyday experience. 
It would seem wiser to direct intention higher, if even 
for no greater purpose than to secure those recondite 
reactions which increase our realization of our serious 
and mysterious natures. May we not hope with Car- 
lyle that "that class of cause-and-efTect speculators 
with whom no wonder would remain wonderful, but 
all things in heaven and earth must be computed and 
'accounted for' — and even the Unknown, the Infinite in 
man's life, had, under the words enthusiasm, supersti- 
tion, spirit of the age, and so forth, obtained, as it 
were, an algebraical symbol and given value — have 
now well-nigh played their part in European culture" ? 

3 X 7 



CHAPTER VI 
The Church as Intention 

Life is the intention of the church, as it is that of 
the world, of the revelation, of conduct and creed ; life 
in its highest, deepest, and widest sense. But whereas 
life in the world is the animation and elaboration of 
an organism, in the revelation a prescription of 
salutary and living principles, in conduct a healthy 
and sane method, in creed a raison d'etre and 
anchorage of religion, in the church the intention is 
expressed of perpetuating life and its office is naturally 
nutritial. The church in a sense is the resultant and 
condensed product of all these other intentions, for it 
exists in the world as part of it, it exists by the reve- 
lation as its consequence, it exists in creed and in 
conduct as being by them defined and advertised. 
But the church pure and simple is a feeder, a teacher, 
a provider, a manufactory of supernatural aliments; 
its essential region of action may be called physio- 
logical religion. 

And in this process of manufacture it is presented 
to us as an intention of the Supreme Mind and as an 
intention of man. As an intention of the Supreme 
Mind it is an organism with creative functions. As 
an intention of man it is a society recognizable by a 
homogeneity of faith and action. Here is an obvious 

318 



The Church as Intention 

predicament. These two intentions are widely re- 
moved in origin, and because of their origin one may 
be regarded as an invariable factor and the other as 
a variable one. That is, the intention of the Supreme 
Mind is persistent in idea and relatively in form, but 
this form may encounter resistance and be temporarily 
suspended or modified. The creative functions of the 
church are intended, and their action may be quite 
specialized, but these functions may be immoderately 
interfered with by intentional or circumstantial re- 
sistance. But if those functions are a matter of reve- 
lation, though they may have suffered more or less in 
intelligibility from the defectivity of the revelation 
itself, yet they must have comparative prominence and 
have secured enough protection in their transmissal 
for intelligible interpretation. 

But the factor of the human intention of right 
opinion, of orthodoxy, of creed, is variable, and in 
detail, in specific configuration of minor matters, must 
always be so. People cannot think exactly alike if 
they think at all, and to fix a stereotyped matrix into 
which each man, woman, and child shall force his or her 
religious convictions is either folly or persecution. 
The matrix is often too large for the available re- 
ligious material of many men, and it is often too 
queerly shaped to be conveniently impressed; again it 
is too narrow or small, and the wide capacity of some 
men for religious speculation and interestedness quite 
overflows the poor receptacles furnished them by 
certain schools. The church in creed, as a human 

319 



The World as Intention 

intention in belief, has wandered far to the right and 
left of any median line, though we believe its face has 
been set safely in the right direction and the fixed 
points of reference have been carefully calculated. 
But the intention in creed in the church, as it is a 
human element, for the very reason that it resides in 
human minds, dependent upon temperament, oppor- 
tunities, learning, and the interpretation of the reve- 
lation itself, does appear variously arrayed at different 
epochs and in different sections. It is useless to 
expect authorities to agree in articles of any creed 
which attempt to shape too precisely the limits of 
grace or the area of salvation. It is unphilosophical 
and ignorant to think that all men can enjoy the same 
ceremonies, the same atmospheres, the same cultus 
with others who in temperament, in environment, in 
education are diversely endowed and made. It is cer- 
tain that there does remain a vast residue of identical 
disposition in men after all this is allowed for, and 
that men in Christendom can, under proper influences 
and with proper reservations, believe fundamentally 
the same things. But to insist upon a stereotyped 
rigidity of practice and subordinate doctrine is an 
extortion and an absurdity. It has never been secured 
in the Roman Church itself, which has carefully 
elaborated a process of dogmatic criticism and focused 
the official microscope of theological inquisition upon 
the infinitesimals of faith. Protestantism embodies 
the very idea of difference, and in the wide oscillations 
from a central orthodoxy approaches something like 

320 



The Church as Intention 

a systematic discord. The factor of human intention 
to hold the revealed truth as a symbol or emblem of 
the church necessarily suffers from defectivity, as all 
intentions do which are resisted. There can be no 
question as to resistance; it is both circumstantial and 
intentional, and it is logical to think that intentional 
resistance springs from that ultimate contravention of 
the Supreme Mind which, located somewhere, inter- 
feres with and disorders the intention of the latter. 

See the divergence of views among theologians and 
between different races. The Christianity of Origen 
is not that of Ambrose, and neither is that of 
Augustine. The Christianity of the Greek Church is 
not that of the Roman, and neither that of the 
Anglican. Plenty of good men in a strict sense may 
have been quite disordered in their theology, and the 
theological penetration of most men to-day from lack 
of use fails to understand the neat distinctions made 
by expert hairsplitters in scholastic ideas. In practice, 
in the scope and interpretation of its acts, the church 
also exhibits a great diversity of usage and concep- 
tions, whether in time or place — puritanic at one age, 
ritualistic at another ; its parts warring now, and now 
at peace; its members affected with Manichseism, or 
Arianism, or Arminianism, or Socinianism, now 
Erastian, now independent. Who can determine the 
insensible gradations of heterodox feeling or views 
which intervene between orthodoxy and something not 
orthodoxy? At what point is the change effected? 
There is and must be a debatable intermediate ground 

321 



The World as Intention 

which without being distinctly heretical is not dis- 
tinctively ex cathedra. If the church has any repre- 
sentative and stable character it depends upon some- 
thing else than the human variable factor of opinion 
or practice ; for, whatever may be said as to tradition, 
the indefectibility of the church and its inspired 
guidance, as a matter of fact crowds and crowds of 
excellent people living at aberrant seasons of the 
church's history accept the prevalent views, which a 
later and better or wiser-tempered age repudiates. The 
thread of truth, if there is an absolute impeccable 
filament of that character, may be retained, but it is 
retained in sections of the church only, for where can 
any church present an absolute rigidity of uniform 
belief? And when a long lapse of time is taken into 
consideration the pretense of uniformity becomes pre- 
posterously ludicrous. When councils have been 
called to determine the contours of faith, or the es- 
sentials of practice, and when the later years, at least 
in the Roman Church, have introduced articles of 
faith which former ages, not presumably lost or 
heretical, strenuously denied or suppressed, it is con- 
ceding too much to the plasticity of human thought to 
insist upon an inerrably correct church. The per- 
petual flux and constitutional vacillation of the 
human mind is too great to permit such a thing, or 
even to bring it into a momentary state of existence. 
So we say the factor of opinion in the church is a 
variable one because it is determined by the human 
mind, and this determination is the index of its own 

322 



The Church as Intention 

instability. Defectivity in intention in the church is 
preeminently the result of defectivity in the intention 
in creed in men. (See Chapter V.) But the defec- 
tivity in the intention in the church is still more evi- 
dent when we regard the intention in conduct in it, 
also determined by man. We said that the church "as 
an intention of man is a society recognizable by a 
homogeneity of faith and action." This homogeneity 
of conduct was intended to imply a high standard of 
living. But what is really seen? The church has 
enfolded within its walls the most shameless and cruel 
examples of human greed, brutality, and cunning; 
bigotry, persecution, an outrageous self-conceit, and a 
flaunting worldliness are conspicuous in its devotees. 
From the vulgar rapacity and frenzy of an Alexan- 
drian mob to the last idle menaces of an expiring 
Calvinism it has put on the expression and credited 
the acts of those who compose it. Ignorant, thriftless, 
and worthless where its human elements are such, and 
vindictive, scurrilous, and bloodthirsty where these 
qualities are dominant in its members, the church has 
been the same and no better than the social aggregates 
which made it up. And by the church we mean the 
whole variegated aspect of Christendom, Roman, 
Greek, and Protestant ; for, whatever the church really 
may be, the intention in creed and conduct to form the 
church is just as exultant and aggressive in Protes- 
tantism as in Romanism, and in creed neither truly 
embodies that ideal body of opinion which might be 
the best and nearest approach to the inconceivable 

323 



The World as Intention 

ideality of a perfect faith. In conduct noble men and 
women have made the church magnificent and august, 
they have raised it, by their exposition of the power 
of its moral sentiments, above its surrounding cir- 
cumstances, and even thrown outward upon the sky 
of nature the beatific vision of a better state. Yet it 
would be a slothful and foolish man who would care 
to examine for purposes of edification its whole 
history. 

Of course, the church is great, glorious, and good; 
of course, the intention of life is strong and luminous 
in it, but its intention is defective as the intention of 
life in the world, in the Bible, and in human creed and 
conduct is defective, and this defectivity is greater at 
one time than at another. But as defectivity in the 
world, the Bible, and human creed and conduct has 
never hidden or overthrown the intention in the first 
of creating life, in the second of elevating and extend- 
ing life, in the third of a practical effort toward secur- 
ing life, so in the church no defectivity of dogma or 
practice or behavior has ever obscured completely or 
administered more than a momentary check to its 
ineffable mission of proclaiming truth and regulating 
conduct. And it improves, it rises, for the secular 
rise of intention in the church is clear and indisputable. 
The fundamentals of faith do not change, can never 
change; the divinity of Christ and his presence in the 
church is the transcendental note which the church 
ever utters, though to-day she may speak it with a 
sickened and enfeebled voice, and to-morrow proclaim 

3 2 4 



The Church as Intention 

it with exultation and boldness and alacrity and joy. 
Now she sleeps ; now she is vocal with appeal. 

Yet her conception and translation of this message 
may deepen and expand, she may see more in it, make 
more out of it, and so by a preordained progression, 
overcoming resistance within and without, her pro- 
found intention is more fitly and fully realized. We 
must not, indeed, fall into the vice of metaphorical 
illusions. We are still contemplating the church upon 
her human, variable side, and though some mystical 
unity or abstraction of unified souls may seem to be 
implied in our personified references to her, she is in 
fact the assemblage of men and women who believe 
or attempt to believe alike, and the secular rise of her 
intention is coincident with the secular rise of the 
intention in creed and conduct in each individual of 
that assemblage. (See Chapter V.) 

As Rosmini says, "The gospel was to mingle itself 
with and display itself in single lines, and thence to 
pass into the communities formed out of them. Hav- 
ing saved the individual man, it was to renew and save 
every association of men — the family, the nation, 
humankind at large. It was to impose wholesome 
laws on all these associations of men, ruling them in 
the name of the God of peace. For associations are 
the work of man ; and it is natural that the divine law, 
which rules man himself, should also control his 
handiwork." 1 For, indeed, it may be said that the 
church should be the reflection of the Supreme Mind 

1 Of the Five Wounds of the Church, Antonio Rosmini, chap. i. 
325 



The World as Intention 

in man, more generally distorted than whole, more 
generally misty than clear. 

Before alluding to this further let us consider for a 
moment that invariable factor in the church which is 
contrasted with the human and variable element, the 
element of creative gifts, the intention of the Supreme 
Mind. This intention presents the church under that 
nutritial aspect which is its best, the aspect of what 
we have termed "physiological religion." This in- 
tention partakes of the character of factual variations 
in the world. (See Chapters II and III.) It is a fact, 
it may endure modifications and possess potential 
elasticity in its outward shapes, but it is exempt from 
even partial depletion or change, it is a perpetuity by 
reason of an attitude of mind prompted by desire, 
guided by thought, and directed by will, in the 
Supreme Mind. The revelation exhibits this intention 
and its formal types or expression. This intention is 
embodied in the sacramental system, for if, as we 
assume, there is a divine intention in the church it 
must appear in some supernatural function. Other- 
wise where is the evidence of the supreme intention 
in the church at all? In the supreme intention in the 
world there is supernature, for there is or was crea- 
tion; in the Bible there is the supernatural, not be- 
cause it is a wonderful history or has been miracu- 
lously preserved or contains supernatural evidence and 
events, but because its transmission was supernatural, 
its inspiration, if it has any, must have been super- 
natural (see Chapter IV), and it is the descent of 

326 



The Church as Intention 

supernature into the realm of things natural. The 
supernatural in conduct and creed can only be implied 
through that aspect of man, the union of mind and 
body, which makes him supernatural (see Prolegom- 
ena), and to the extent that there is a human 
intention in the church — namely, of creed and con- 
duct — there is an adumbrant form of the super- 
natural. But this does not meet, the requirements of 
our natural expectations of the church, our decided 
claims upon her, nor, indeed, does it explain the 
promise and words of prophecy and revelation. The 
church has a gift, a creative power, a real objective, 
availing, and miraculous agency. At least, if the 
church has not, it seems to us a very inadequate 
institution. The argument, on the basis of inten- 
tion, that it has is this: The law of the Supreme 
Mind is creativeness (see Prolegomena, Miracles), and 
as intention represents an entire mental act, being 
thought, will, and feeling, any expression of intention 
by the Supreme Mind implies the exhibition of its 
innate nature, and that is supernature. It has been 
so in the world, it certainly was so in the revelation, 
and it must be so in the church. The human element 
does not express this; what does? This superhuman 
element naturally, through some office or applied 
efficacy in the church. And these offices retaining this 
applied efficacy are the sacraments, of which Rosmini 
has said: "Whence, then, was that hidden force by 
which the apostolic words became more than mere 
words, and by which they so far exceeded those of all 

327 



The World as Intention 

the masters of human wisdom? Whence did they 
derive that saving power which grappled with man 
within the last defenses of the soul and there tri- 
umphed over him ? What further special agencies did 
the apostles produce in order to save man as a whole — 
his intellectual as well as his practical nature — and to 
subject the entire world to a cross? . . . The 
wonderful works, the mysterious rites, by means of 
which the apostles reformed the world were the 
sacraments." 1 

The action of these sacraments, if the hypothesis 
that they have any action at all is granted, must 
be supernatural. For we have said that supernature 
consists in the "interaction of agencies whose con- 
tacts are scientifically inconceivable" (Prolegomena), 
and it is quite obvious that the sacraments are a 
striking and complete illustration of this. Nothing 
sensibly can be less adequate to imply a spiritual 
change or a beginning of a spiritual change than 
sprinkling an infant with water, and nothing more 
strangely incongruous to rational conceptions to con- 
vey the power and substance of Godhead than the 
Christian communion of bread and wine. To be re- 
generated, to undergo "a death unto sin and a new 
birth unto righteousness," as the Catechism has it, by 
the rather trifling ceremony of baptism, or to become 
mystically transfigured by the fragmentary participa- 
tion in eating and drinking under certain supposi- 
tional efficacies, induced by a form of words, are 

1 Of the Five Wounds of the Church, Antonio Rosmini. 

328 



The Church as Intention 

difficult statements to believe. And when we can, in 
no discoverable degree, see that the recipients are a 
bit different from their former states — perhaps, in 
some cases, noticeably worse — the difficulty becomes 
appalling. Now, the subtlety and the truth of the 
doctrine of intention as applied to this predicament lies 
in the proposition that this obstacle of enormously 
disproportionate results and agencies, this very diffi- 
culty, is the resistance — call it what you will, cir- 
cumstantial or intentional — which the intention of the 
Supreme Mind, expressed in these sacraments, re- 
ceives. Therefore the difficulty of belief in sacra- 
ments is the resistance that defeats their purpose. 
The defectivity of intention in sacraments arises from 
the essential skepticism which their form and preten- 
sions excite. Or, in other words, the perfection of the 
intention of the Supreme Mind in sacraments depends 
upon the reciprocal intention of man to receive them. 
The sacramental act involves the apposition of two 
intentions against each other. The depth of this sub- 
ject is not easily exhausted, and it is expressed in 
Dr. Mason's remark, " All that is of real value, besides 
a profession of faith and a recognition of church fel- 
lowship, is an act of inward appropriation by the com- 
municant of an invisible grace which is, after all, only 
nominally attached to the sacramental elements. ,, If 
there is no difference whatever in the conscious agent 
who has received a sacrament from his former state, 
there is deficiency of response — latent or otherwise — 
in him, and in all cases there must be some or a great 

329 



The World as Intention 

deal of deficiency. For the intention on the part of 
the recipient must be an "attitude of mind prompted 
by desire, guided by thought, and directed by will," 
whereby he desires to receive the supernatural 
benefit, thinks to receive it, and wills to receive it. 
This is a difficult feat so far as bringing the intention 
out of idea into fact is concerned, and perhaps but few 
ever perform it; so that the actual state of the case is 
that sacraments act, but act defectively and by small 
increments of power to those who receive them, and 
where uninvited do not act at all. But where there is 
intention they do act, even though the intention be 
slight and simply diffused, rather than definite and 
imperious. 

As to infants and baptism, where the recipient 
forms no intention, and the act is nonrepetitive, it can 
only be said — and the subject is to us unpleasant — 
that at least in the infant there is also no resistance, 
and the intentions of its sponsors act by imposition. 
This to us will always seem obscure, and an unscien- 
tific application of the sacramental theory. When 
the individual has been formed (see Analytics of a 
Belief in a Future Life) the control of intention 
can be made; then the office of baptism naturally 
is apposite and operative. But we cannot involve our- 
selves in theological quiddities; the control of inten- 
tion is shown, its recondite value in these supernatural 
functions of the church, as conditioning the action of 
the Supreme Mind in their reality and efficacy, is 
pointed out. As to facts, some positively affirm that 

330 



The Church as Intention 

sacraments do initiate and complete changes, do 
beautify characters, and do import a subtle fineness 
and fragrance to natures, which, whether by birth and 
endowment admirable or not, have become through 
these influences deeper and more productive. It may 
well become a subject for observation and study, and 
with penetrating students might yield qualitative and 
quantitative results. 

For instance, we are told that "in such as Augus- 
tine, A Kempis, Luther, Pascal, Leighton, Fenelon, 
Henry Martyn, the pure and sacred fire has been relit 
from age to age. They, by what they were, and what 
they did, became, each to his generation, the re- 
newers of a deeper, more substantial morality. For 
the Christian light in them was not a tradition or an 
orthodoxy, but a living flame, enlightening and warm- 
ing themselves, and passing from them to others. 
And so to this day their works are storehouses of 
moral and spiritual quickening, more than all the 
books of all the moralists. When you read Leighton, 
for instance, you feel yourself breathing a spiritual air 
compared with which the atmosphere of the moral 
systems is dull and depressing." 1 

We now for a moment glance at the signs of inten- 
tion as given in article XII (Chapter I), namely, 
application, contrivance, and approach, and seek them 
in the church. The conclusions reached are at least 
interesting. If the church publishes an intention she 
should do so by a display in her action of industry, in 

1 Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, J. C Shairp, p. 326. 
331 



The World as Intention 

her construction of device, and in her history of in- 
creasing success. And we may safely believe these 
signs in her are positively shown. The application, 
the ceaseless ambition and devotion of the church, her 
unquelled audacity in proclaiming her errand, her 
resuscitation after periods of depression and torpor, 
and the invincible ingenuity with which her ministers 
secure her aims have characterized her life and been 
the very sureties of her existence. Says Dr. Newman, 
"Till these last centuries the visible church was, at 
least to her children, the light of the world, as con- 
spicuous as the sun in the heavens ; and the creed was 
written on her forehead and proclaimed through her 
voice by a teaching as precise as it was emphatical." 

As to contrivance, all scientific conception of the 
church must embrace the theory of her mechanical 
scheme, her adjustment of parts, her orders and func- 
tions. As an intention she must present the appear- 
ance of a definite instrumentality, a distinct regulated 
system or government, a congelation and symmetry of 
interblending ingredients. No intention is expressed 
in an aggregation of unrelated or feebly connected 
units, in the heterogeneity of independent individuals. 
The church expresses contrivance, a mechanism of 
compacted and some interior intricacy, and in the 
actual stages of its development seemed to exhibit the 
direction of a contriving mind. True, as the church 
is both a human and a divine intention (see ante) the 
contrivance extant in her is both human and divine, 
but it must be also true that the contrivance in each 

332 



The Church as Intention 

case is adapted to securing the object of its own in- 
tention. Hence the contrivance in the church so far 
as it is human relates to creed and conduct, but so far 
as it is divine relates to sacraments. This is really a 
serious matter, for in some sense it implies a strict 
method for the bestowal of the latter, a contrivance by 
which their benefits are secured. It is quite foreign 
to our own purpose and tastes to discuss the validity 
and authority of certain forms and requisites in con- 
nection with sacraments. We only in a purely philo- 
sophic spirit point out the inference that there are 
forms and requisites as in themselves presenting the 
mark of contrivance, which itself advertises intention; 
that while it may seem more apposite to the boundless 
freedom and beneficence of a supernatural dispensa- 
tion of grace that its benefits could be seized at large 
and as it were free, it is in the sanction of a fixed 
method for their use that we discover the unity of the 
underlying conception of intention with intention as a 
philosophic fact, wherever and whenever exhibited, so 
far as intention has passed beyond the realm of ideas 
into that of action. There must be contrivance, a 
mode and a procedure of agencies. 

The human intention in contrivance in the church is 
seen in councils and synods, in forms, confessions of 
faith, ritual, canon law, etc.; and because human in- 
tention is a necessary part of the whole intention of 
the church human contrivance must be respected, and 
on the lines of tradition and revelation maintained. 
The divine intention in contrivance in the church, of 

333 



The World as Intention 

course, is only found in the revelation, and theologians 
and doctors of the church shall be held to a strict 
accountability if they either obscure or pervert the 
message so far as it is clearly and positively given. 

The factor of approach as a mark of intention has 
certainly been observed in the past, however baffling 
the state of things to-day seems. The picture of the 
church's progress, and the strengthening of its pur- 
pose, and the lessening circles of antagonistic thought 
is a familiar study. As Lilly says, we trace "the 
growth of this society, we note its marvelous hierar- 
chical development, as it overlaps the secular state and 
the ecclesiastical organization grows upon the lines 
of the civil, the diocese, the unit, then the province 
(the ecclesiastical use inverted the civil dignity of the 
two terms), and lastly the patriarchate, correspond- 
ing more or less closely with the prefecture; while the 
ruler of the Roman Church imperceptibly takes the 
place of the Pontiff of Jupiter Capitolinus — the 
Flamen Dialis who, as Festus says, was the priest of 
the world rather than of the city." 1 And at the con- 
clusion of his brilliant and exalted masterpiece, His- 
tory of Christianity, Milman says : "Thus, then, Chris- 
tianity had become the religion of the Roman world: 
it had not, indeed, confined its adventurous spirit of 
moral conquest within these limits; yet it is in the 
Roman world that its more extensive and permanent 
influence, as well as its peculiar vicissitudes, can alone 
be followed out with distinctness and accuracy. 

1 Chapters on European History, W. S. Lilly. 

334 



The Church as Intention 

Paganism was slowly expiring; the hostile edicts of 
emperors, down to the final legislation of Justinian, 
did but accelerate its inevitable destiny. Its temples, 
where not destroyed, were perishing by neglect and 
peaceful decay, or, where their solid structures defied 
these violent assailants, stood deserted and overgrown 
with weeds ; the unpaid priests ceased to offer not only 
sacrifice, but prayer, and were gradually dying out as 
a separate order of men. Its philosophy lingered in 
a few cities of Greece, till the economy or the religion 
of the Eastern emperor finally closed its schools. The 
doom of the Roman empire was likewise sealed: the 
horizon on all sides was dark with overwhelming 
clouds; and the internal energies of the empire, the 
military spirit, the wealth, the imperial power, had 
crumbled away. The external unity was dissolved; 
the provinces were gradually severed from the main 
body; the Western empire was rapidly sinking, and 
the Eastern falling into hopeless decrepitude. Yet, 
though her external polity was dissolved, though her 
visible throne was prostrate upon the earth, Rome 
still ruled the mind of man, and her secret domination 
maintained its influence until it assumed a new out- 
ward form. Rome survived in her laws, in her 
municipal institutions, and in that which lent a new 
sanctity and reverence to her laws, and gave strength 
by their alliance with its own peculiar polity to the 
municipal institutions- — in her adopted religion. The 
empire of Christ succeeded to the empire of the 
Caesars." 

335 



The World as Intention 

And in the slow absorption and transmutation of 
the Roman empire by itself the church evinced its deep 
intentional nature. For it appropriated paganism, in 
a measure, that it might proclaim its peculiar mission. 
It assumed the formalism of an inimical system that 
it might penetrate the spiritual recesses of heathendom 
and diffuse through them its own beneficial atmos- 
phere. It was its own overmastering intention and 
aim that made it indifferent to the ceremonial type of 
its presentation so long as it was presented somehow, 
indifferent, indeed, to minor perversions so long as its 
nucleal declaration was shown in high relief. Its in- 
tention was forcible and persistent whether or not its 
accessories and form were technically and historically 
apposite. 

Lord Lindsay as quoted by Dr. Lundy says: "Ad- 
mitting all that has been said, and truly said, and 
rightly insisted upon, respecting the adoption of pagan 
rites and ceremonies into Christianity, it is equally 
true that our ancestors touched nothing that they did 
not Christianize; they consecrated this visible world 
into a temple to God, of which the heavens were the 
dome, the mountains the altars, the forests the pillared 
aisles, the breath of spring the incense, and the run- 
ning streams the music;" and Dr. Lundy himself 
says: "Pagans must not be repelled from the newly 
born Faith by anything repulsive, gloomy, and forbid- 
ding. It must rather be suggested and commended to 
them by what was already familiar to them in symbol 
and myth, which did not conflict with unity of idea 

336 



The Church as Intention 

or purity and innocence.' ' But why squabble about 
this? Is not the intention to induce a frame of mind 
life-giving and perennial the main matter? Who 
shall disconcert us by sneering at our "pagan rites"? 
If in the sum and solidarity of human emotions 
similar processes evoke similar responses, and those 
responses are desirable, what do we care about anach- 
ronisms, or coincidences, or derivations? Matthew 
Arnold writes : "Neither will the old forms of Chris- 
tian worship be extinguished by the growth of a truer 
conception of their essential contents. Those forms, 
thrown out at dimly grasped truth, approximative and 
provisional representations of it, and which are now 
surrounded with such an atmosphere of tender and 
profound sentiment, will not disappear." 

The church passed then into a further stage of its 
"approach" toward its completed intention; it en- 
countered the great hosts of barbarism, and penetrated 
the flood of wild men who inundated the Roman em- 
pire, with its creed and spirit. Again, it mingled its 
current of form with the tribal stories and religious 
cultus of the races it overgrew. So long as its precise 
and distinctive intention was respected it could afford, 
may, indeed, by a just impulse of humanity, have 
delighted, to weave within the meshes of its rich 
tissues of story and legend and spiritualized picture- 
esqueness the heroic tales and the touching and 
hallowed rites of the strong and imaginative Teutonic 
hordes. Its intention was preserved, and by its 
intention it is judged. 

337 



The World as Intention 

Then the Middle Ages succeeded, and the church 
protected the liberties of men, interposing a barrier 
of refuge between the pretensions of kings and rulers 
and the defenselessness and innocence of subjects, and 
keeping alive the sacred fires of liberty on the altars 
of a faith that made all men equal before God. 

In speaking of the danger of the absorption of the 
church by feudalism, Lilly says : "It would have meant 
the extinction of the church as a society perfect and 
complete in herself, and with her the extinction of the 
great principles of which she was the sole represen- 
tative in the world — the principles of the supremacy 
of law; of the freedom of conscience; of the real 
equality of all men ; of their brotherhood in the Chris- 
tian faith; of the essentially fiduciary and limited 
nature of human authority. 

The church slowly lost its own incommunicable 
quality, and by a process of reduction, of ossification, 
became degraded into an instrumentality of ambition, 
greed, and corruption. Rosmini has deplored in 
bitter words the degradation of the bishops, and the 
invasion of a secular pride that hid the true lusters of 
the church beneath the sordid regalia of worldly 
opulence and worldly appetite. As a "contrivance," 
as an organization which appeared to reach forward 
to an object and to increasingly appropriate it, the 
church had, up to this time, answered that require- 
ment of intention which is found in "approach." But 
in its secular rise of intention it now entered upon a 
period of long duration, one yet continuing "when the 

338 



The Church as Intention 

foundations of the great deep are broken up, and 
everything is in question," and amid that tumultuous 
ocean of the storms of opinion the church went to 
pieces. A great section of it — the Greek communion — 
had long before fallen from it, and lay, and has lain, 
petrified into an attenuated store of religious asceti- 
cism and superstition, barely floating upward in the 
sea of intelligent thought, so encumbered are its limbs 
with the stiffening manacles of formalism. 

That period has been extended over four centuries, 
and how amazing has been the fluctuating phases of 
thought in that time! The idea of the church as an 
authoritative expression of creed has been greatly 
limited, and "we see the great religious principles of 
man's personal responsibility, though maintained by 
the reformers in the strictest subordination to the 
authority of the divine word, aiming more and more, 
under humanistic and other influences, at unlimited 
self-assertion, and gradually emancipating itself from 
every form of authority even upon fundamental ar- 
ticles of faith" (Christlieb quoted by Rev. E. H. 
Jewett in Diabolology). The church as a controlling 
organism seems suppressed or moribund, and the as- 
pect of "approach" and success in her intention seems, 
at least momentarily, obscured. But we think the 
church is on the verge of a magnificent and culminat- 
ing realization of power and beauty. Science and 
philosophy and history and comparative studies are 
running parallel with a widening sense of human 
destinies and a deepening sense of human brother- 

339 



The World as Intention 

hood. With modern ways of living, with the wonder- 
ful increase of appliances for merely selfish living, 
with the increase of human receptivity for a great 
amount and great variety of pleasure, there has been 
developing everywhere a deep and wide discontent, 
a grave, perhaps very unsubmissive, wonder at the 
violent and harsh state of things generally, an impa- 
tient summons upon the skies to open and let down a 
new and better dispensation, a vexed sense of restless- 
ness and hopelessness and weariness. These modern 
influences of learning and skill and objective vivacity 
and interest, on the one hand, and an honest wish to 
improve society by some enveloping scheme of 
ameliorated social conditions, on the other, are enter- 
ing, and, at any rate, must enter, the church, before she 
accomplishes her intention on earth and merits any 
continuance in an ascending intention hereafter. 

This is realized to-day, it is in the air, and, better, 
it is stirring in the minds of men. If, indeed, the 
church as an intention expresses a divine purpose of 
benefaction and life, then she must trenchantly pro- 
claim the brotherhood of men, and rush into the vortex 
of popular emotions, popular fancies, catchwords, and 
nostrums, and fight for the principles of Christ with 
confidence and by example. She has already appro- 
priated science, and wisely understood science to-day 
furnishes her the best weapons for her warfare. Let 
her dismembered parts unite, fused along all lines of 
contact by a burning love for better things. Let her 
without surrendering her dignity or power, without 

340 



The Church as Intention 

compromise or forgetfulness of the treasures and 
teachings she carries, wrap the world in the glow and 
fire of a contagious enthusiasm that may perhaps burn 
so imperiously that its heat will break that impene- 
trable vault above us, and bring down the sparkling 
messages of heavenly recognition. 

341 



CHAPTER VH 

Conclusion 

Matthew Arnold says the Platonists of the sev- 
enteenth century, "placed between the sacerdotal 
religion of the Laudian clergy, on the one side, and 
the notional religion of the Puritans, on the other, 
saw the sterility, the certain doom, of both; saw that 
stand permanently such developments of religion could 
not, inasmuch as Christianity was not what either of 
them supposed, but was a temper, a behavior" 

The doctrine of intention dwells indeed upon a 
temper, a frame and attitude of mind, but it incloses 
more rigid elements as ultimate data of reference. It 
affirms that while the intention must exist as an at- 
mosphere, so to speak, it must also exist as a definite 
project. Herein enter its strengthening and fixed 
principles. Wherever we are supposed to find inten- 
tion in those constants we have reviewed, the world, 
revelation, conduct and creed, the church, we are 
taught by the doctrine to expect a vital aim, an increase 
and furtherance of life, which, as Matthew Arnold 
says, "is, in other words, the desire for happiness" 
And further — and herein lies the rigidity of the doc- 
trine, its substantiality — the intention works in a 
particular way; whether defective or not it exhibits 
certain interior fixities of mind which are of the 

342 



Conclusion 

essence of the intention, which express the involution 
of the Supreme Mind in the things of this life, and 
from which we as observers are to adjust our concep- 
tions and philosophies. It interprets the world as the 
evidence of an intention and one of supreme vitalizing 
power, with ultimate vital ends which must be for us 
the excuse or reason for its existence. But it does 
not stop with explaining the world wholly as an 
amiable design which has somehow got into it foreign 
and destructive elements. It asserts resistance in the 
world because the world is itself intention, and re- 
sistance is the index of intention (Chapter I). It as- 
serts factual variations or decisions of particular 
designs in the phenomena of the world, and it gathers 
within these the wide expanse and richness of poten- 
tial variations which, prevised in idea, have been in 
time elicited by the circumstantial resistances en- 
countered in the process of geological evolution. It 
insists upon a secular rise of intention by which the 
history of creation is made progressive and its future 
limitless. In the Bible it discovers an actual revela- 
tion involving the supernatural, by which an inten- 
tion of life is also rigidly connected with certain 
events and their consequences and implications. 
Defectivity and the secular rise of intention also ap- 
pear here, but there is no obscurity at last as to the 
virtual significance and potency of the message. 

In creed and conduct it divines a legitimate se- 
quence of life or death upon both, as a preordained 
intention, and in the transference of this intention to 

343 



The World as Intention 

the subject — man himself — it makes man's intention 
the measure of his life. But that intention must more 
and more struggle into definiteness and fixity, against 
all sorts of resistance which make it defective, and by 
a secular ascension reach higher and more fruitful 
planes of feeling and practice, always in accord with 
the fundamentals of revealed truth, as knitting thereby 
the sovereign powers of the intention of the Supreme 
Mind with the receptive powers of the intention in 
man. Finally, the church is an intention of life, and. 
displays the same defectivity and responds to the same 
periodic law of improvement, and in any ideal form 
is the unity of a divine and human intention whereby 
the first nourishes life and the second illuminates and 
guides it. 

The philosophy of the doctrine of intention is 
remedial for those systems of thought which narrowly 
circumscribe feeling and practice within dogmatic 
limits, by asserting the emancipating and effective 
power of good intention; it makes the world clearer 
as an intention, which by a necessary defectivity, 
arising from some violent and pervasive obstruction, 
is only partially achieved, but which is increasingly 
realized in time, and it helps us in creed and conduct 
by presenting the conception of an intention, of which 
man is partly an involuntary agent, though by volun- 
tary submission he can hasten the development and 
realization of its final result, and in which his personal 
estimate is determined by his personal desire to think 
and do right. The Bible is no longer a scrupulously 

344 



Conclusion 

exact book, but it is something better. It enfolds and 
expresses an intention of life, and it expresses it un- 
der similar conditions and with similar phenomena to 
that shown in all other manifestations of intention. 
Lastly, the world is descried as a battlefield of war- 
ring purposes with one, original and noble, which we 
may conceive is increasingly successful, and which, 
limited and opposed, has risen to its ends with a 
steady and cosmic impetus, through ages of worlds 
and multitudes of living things. It repeals that awful 
accusation of responsibility for suffering which the 
heart of man is inclined to make against God, for it 
discovers a faulted intention which no power can 
rectify except in time, because the very attitude of in- 
tention to make life, by its own law, summons forth 
resistance, which again publishes intention, and forces 
the Supreme Mind into the myriad agencies of crea- 
tiveness, by which creativeness its own existence is 
advertised. The church is simpler and less perplex- 
ing, for, however various its practice and separated its 
tenets, it maintains, throughout, a life-giving inten- 
tion, and holds by an irrevocable testament its life- 
giving functions. 

We indeed think that such a summary does not do 
full justice to a variety of thoughts, arguments, and 
statements made in the preceding chapters, and upon 
the language of this summary no conclusions as to the 
newness or adaptability of our position can be fairly 
drawn. It may appear, indeed, that we have only 
restated the credited case of Christianity, and that 

345 



The World as Intention 

"popular religion" finds here only a less conventional 
and more metaphysical representation. We hope 
that the views given here are entirely conformable to 
Christian views, as they may be held and probably are 
held by a few, but we insist that many phases of 
Christianity are quite alienated from any such doc- 
trine as we have presented, though in many ways it 
systematizes and renovates naturally truthful and 
orthodox conclusions. 

It also invites, perchance, the attention of those who 
have, so long and so much, forgotten attention to such 
matters, to reexamine the tendency and consequences 
of their thought, and to be induced to reperuse the 
considerations and admonitions which once guided 
and delighted them; it may reawaken an intention — 
which a too literal and polemic theology had diverted 
or destroyed — and it may help to blend the diverse 
courses of science, art, literature, and business with 
the currents of feeling, which so singularly persist in 
the realm of feeling we call religion, whose regional 
activities affect us all and whose power and produc- 
tivity are largely, if not indispensably, dependent upon 
something we call revelation. 

346 



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